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Sony Pictures options Stone’s comic novel The Prison Minyan for TV
Sony Pictures has optioned US writer Jonathan Stone’s novel The Prison Minyan (Lightning Books) for adaptation as a series of one-hour "dramedy" episodes.
Andrew Plotkin, senior vice-president of drama development at Sony Pictures Television Studios, acquired film rights from John Beach and Kevin Cleary of Gravity Squared Entertainment in Los Angeles and Andrea Cavallaro of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency in Del Mar, California.
Plotkin has developed series including “The Boys”, “Them”, “I Know What You Did Last Summer”, “One Tree Hill”, “Nip/Tuck”, “Cold Case” and “Veronica Mars”.
The Prison Minyan was published simultaneously in the UK and the US by Lightning Books in January 2022, after publisher Dan Hiscocks acquired rights from Vanessa Kerr at Abner Stein in London.
It tells the story of a group of fraudsters, tax evaders, trigamists and forgers at Otisville Prison, the real-life jail in upstate New York which is the prison of choice for Jewish offenders. When the regime toughens to punish a newly arrived celebrity convict who has upset the 45th president, the inmates find devious ways to fight back.
Stone, who got the idea for the novel from the incarceration at Otisville of Donald Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen, said of the option deal: “I am so pleased with this development. I’ve always thought The Prison Minyan’s setting and characters would be a great basis for a series. Now it looks like savvier folks than me feel the same way.”
Hiscocks said: "We fell in love with The Prison Minyan as soon as we saw the manuscript. We were overjoyed when it got a review in the New York Times – no mean achievement for a tiny UK indie publisher –and equally delighted when the Jewish Chronicle called it ‘this most cherishably Jewish of books’.
“We’re over the moon to see it taken up by the industry’s biggest independent content producer. With smart comedy, wisdom and some serious jeopardy in its action scenes, it’s perfect for the small screen."
