CBS adapting "The Never List" kidnapping bestseller for TV

PanARMENIAN.Net - CBS is bringing The Never List to the small screen, The Hollywood Reporter said.

Koethi Zan's international best-seller about four kidnapped girls is being adapted for TV, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Author-screenwriter A.M. Homes (The End of Alice, The L Word) will pen the script and executive produce the CBS Television Studios drama, which has received a script commitment from the network.

Homes will adapt Zan's debut novel, with the author on board as a supervising producer. Sarah Timberman and Carl Beverly will serve as executive producers alongside Homes. Published in July by Pamela Dorman Books (Penguin), Zan's novel revolves around four kidnapped young women -- three of whom are rescued. The book centers on Sarah Farber, who 10 years after the ordeal, is now a top trauma doctor at a prestigious New York City hospital in the TV version, living life on her own while continuing to unravel the mystery of the missing girl's disappearance.

Zan, a former senior vp and deputy general counsel at MTV, said in a September interview with Random House that she found inspiration in the story of captivity survivors Elisabeth Fritzl, Natascha Kampusch, Sabine Dardenne and Jaycee Lee Dugard. "These women have suffered through the absolute worst thing I can imagine and every one of them has demonstrated incredible strength in the wake of such trauma," she said. "My own difficult life struggles paled in comparison. I was -- and am -- in awe of them. I wanted to create a character like that: a woman who was strong in the face of unfathomable horror, but who needed to confront her past to figure that out."

UTA brokered the deal on behalf of Alexandra Machinist at Janklow & Nesbit. Zan and Homes are both repped by UTA; Homes is additionally repped by Brillstein Entertainment Partners; Timberman and Beverly are with CAA.

For CBSTVS-based Timberman-Beverly Productions, this marks the banner's latest sale this development season. The Elementary, Unforgettable, Masters of Sex and Justified duo also have an adaptation of Anne Rice's Seraphim novels in the works with CBS, Wizard of Oz-themed Dorothy at CBS and A&E's bull riding drama Blood, Sweat & Tears in the works.

Homes, meanwhile, is best known for controversial books and short stories including 1996's The End of Alice, a novel about a convicted child molester and murderer. Her credits Showtime's The L Word and features Wanted and The Safety of Objects.