All That Glitters...
London's calling, again; What's got eight legs and a lot of opinions?; You get a book, you get a book, everybody gets a book; and so much more.
Your Inside Voice is a curated cultural newsletter brought to you by Pragmatic, the IP/literary scouting studio that helps film & tv producers find, acquire, and develop material for the screen.
THE MAIN COURSE
London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe | Doubleday | April 7
London’s having a moment, innit? There’s barely been time to recover from this year’s London Book Fair—and the utterly bonkers, unmissable season four of HBO’s Industry—before this month’s book pick takes us right back to the cobbled streets of Soho, along the murky waters of the River Thames.
To read anything by Patrick Radden Keefe is to love it, and his deeply reported, page-turning 2024 New Yorker article about the tragic death of London teenager Zac Brettler was no exception. It seemed inconceivable at the time that there could be more to the story. But more Keefe did find, and London Falling tells—at sweeping, unsparing scale—how, after their son’s body is pulled from the Thames near MI6, Brettler’s parents uncover a double life that leads them into London’s criminal underworld, and toward a potential cover-up.
If you think you know the whole of this story from the New Yorker article, you don’t. London Falling takes readers from the monied streets of Mayfair and Marylebone to post-coup d’état 1972 Uganda (with a side quest into the goings-on of the 1890 Imperial British East Africa Company), on to early 20th-century Czechoslovakia—and back again. But the book never lets go of the tragedy at its heart: the death of a young man, perhaps bewildered by a confusing world of instant success in a hyperconnected world, and contemporary masculine ideals—and the profound love his parents have for him and his memory.
Keefe tells this fundamentally global story in a deeply personal-but-probing way that few investigative writers could. It’s gripping, thoughtful, empathetic, and absorbing all at once—the kind of book you wish you could experience again for the first time.
YOUR SOMMELIER’S PAIRING
The world feels upside down these days, so forgive us for an inverted Sommelier’s Pairing this month. Instead of suggesting a book to pair with your latest favorite binge, here’s a wonderfully charming and poignant story on the screen adapted from a beloved international bestseller.
Netflix’s adaptation of Shelby van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures—an absolute banger of a novel—premiers on Netflix May 12. So, you’ve still got time to devour the book (and devour you will, it really is so very good) before enjoying the story of a widow who forms an unlikely and profound friendship with an opinionated octopus.
THE CHEESE COURSE
DESSERT
Hollywood binges on the written word (Leah Asmelash | CNN)
The last few years in the book-to-screen market have been in a word, wild. What started decades ago as a niche corner of the feature film development machine has evolved into a cornerstone of development for producers, studios, and streamers making everything from $250M feature films & $1B series and prestige series, to vertical dramas for your phone (R.I.P. Quibi, you weren’t wrong, just early).
Here’s a snapshot of the marketplace from way back in 2012—the year that K-Pop’s OG import hit American shores, Gangnam style—when actively searching for and adapting books was an indulgence of maybe a dozen producers of prestige-leaning feature films and dystopian YA trilogies.
Then came the ascendance of global streaming platforms with headquarters very much not in Los Angeles, a global pandemic, and mergers and acquisitions proceeding at more than a medium pace. Now, shaking the trees of publishing and journalism and social media and video games and theater and anything else that someone else will believe is IP has become an indispensable part of the process of developing and producing projects. Just in time, of course, for a media ecosystem still trying to make sense of getting anyone’s attention in an algorithmically-saturated and fractured arrangement of eyeballs and bracing itself for whatever the robots will bring.
CNN goes long on this evolution, and on the ways all of these changes have forever altered what’s now a mature, robust, and hyper-competitive marketplace for adaptable books and IP. No one knows what the future holds (except for maybe Vanity Fair c. 2006, apparently!) for the business of storytelling on screen, but it’s sure to require bespoke, comprehensive access to expertly curated source material from around the world—and a strategic, creative P.O.V. to make it all work—that defines the four corners of a story and gives life to vivid characters and immersive worlds.
Why Tech Bros Are Now Obsessed with Taste (Kyle Chaka | The New Yorker)
Having taste is the new learning to code.
Book Output Topped Four Million in 2025 (Jim Milliot | Publishers Weekly)
It’s not just your algorithm. There really are so many books.
The Writers Who Can’t Let Go of the South (Emma Sarappo | The Atlantic)
You can keep your A.I. The real literary cheat code is being from the South.
DIGESTIF
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Pragmatic works with a select list of American and international film & television clients, helping them find, acquire, and develop books and other intellectual property—articles, life rights, podcasts, video games, theater…and so much more—for the screen. If you’re interested in working with us and being plugged into a global, curated IP platform, we’d love to hear from you! Send us an email.