Plagiarism, Puns and Lego

This episode is presented by E.E. Marina, are you hosting or guesting for Christmas this year? Normally, every other year, I am a very grateful guest, but I am now a slightly trepidatious host.

Yes, it is me in the apron having a meltdown over all the cooking. No, I don't think I'll have a meltdown.

It's a lot, isn't it?

But you have to just keep saying to yourself, it's just a big chicken. Just a big chicken.
Just a really big chicken. It's just a really enormous chicken.
We are also hosting this year.

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Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Residence Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina.
Hi. I'm Richard Osman.
Hello, Marina. Hello, Richard.
How are you? I'm okay.

Now, last week, I asked a question of my own. And sorry, straight in.
Yeah. No, no, no, no.

Wow.

Have you done something with your hair? Yeah.

Because you should.

I washed it, and that's enough.

Last week, I asked a question of our listeners because the John Lewis advert, the, you know, where love lives, the rave dad, and as quite so often with adverts, actually, there is no information anywhere as to who played Rave Dad.

You can't find it anywhere. So I was like, what's going on? I wonder if something is going on here.
So I put out the challenge to our listeners and they came back in droves. So thank you.

I'm going to tell you in one second that you've been trumped, but thank you everyone who came back and who um had identified roberto davide who is an italian american actor lots of you said he we just saw him in bbc civilizations rise and fall they saw him in so i was going to read out lots of people's names say thank you for doing that but then who gets in touch but roberto davide himself chief among the droves exactly um so i'm afraid you listen listeners you get it right uh rave dad himself has written in so we have to read out his instead of of yours.

You get it? If you were Rave Dad, I'd be reading yours out. He is a listener in Vales.
Yes, he says, hello, Richard Marino. I was listening to your podcast episode.

Will Wicked 2 help Hollywood defy gravity? Was pleasantly surprised to hear you mention the John Lewis ad. You asked about the actor who played the dad, and I wanted to reach out because it is me.

I really appreciate the kind words. Thought I'd share a little bit more about the experience.
He said, he's talking about, he said, four days. He says it's enormously intense.

And what I hadn't thought is quite right. There's a lot going on in that advert and a lot of emotion in that advert, but no lines.

So everything is literally done in those looks between him and the other actors. But Roberto, thank you so much.
I'm glad that you're a real human being.

I'm glad that everyone saw you in the BBC Civilizations thing as well. And yeah, to our wonderful listeners, thank you so much for sending it in.

But you do understand that when Ravedad calls, we answer. Yeah.

Shall we get on with today with today's questions? Yes, please. Give me a question.
I have one for you here, and it is from Henry Longstaff. Henry Longstaff.
One of the merry men.

One of the merry men, exactly.

Henry Longstaff, Longstaff, who is from the 15th century, asks us, yea, verily,

starts Henry Longstaff. He doesn't at all.
He actually starts, I've heard Apple TV, you think that's something that Shakespeare wouldn't have written? No.

Says, I've heard Apple TV have pulled the show The Hunt. after it has emerged that it may be plagiarized from another novel.
How did it get this far?

Oh my god, I'm so glad that somebody asked about this because it's a wild story. I don't know if anyone's seen it.
You've seen it, but anyway, just to sort of summarise, Apple TV have this new show

was about to which was going to come out last week it's french um it's made by the producers gaumont um but for apple um or pom as they call it in france

the synopsis is a group of friends go hunting and um when they're out in the forest or wherever they become aware of another group of hunters and one of them is shot deliberately they think by one of the other groups of hunters but for whatever reason i guess we'd have got into it uh they decide not to say anything a little bit like deliverance and you know they return to their normal lives, but then they become aware that they sense that they're being watched and perhaps hunted back in their normal lives.

Okay. And it's a thriller.

And as you say, it's called The Hunt. A French journalist alleged that it was a direct...
adaptation of a novel called Shoot by Douglas Fairbairn, published in 1973. Not only that,

that book was adapted into a movie called Shoot, starring Ernest Borglian and Cliff Robertson in 1976. And Douglas Fairbairn, the author, got credit on that.

The book was translated into French in the 1970s and called La Trac, The Hunt. No.
Yes, no, no, listen. So can you believe it?

But the current version of The Hunt, the show that was all ready to go and be aired and everything, imminently, was created, written, and directed by a guy called Cédric Onger.

And Apple have now completely pulled it.

So that does suggest there's quite a serious case to answer here.

Now, the law on this is quite, it's relatively, you know, interesting in some ways is that there's no sort of IP protection of a summary of a story. You might be able to have a case for it.

And under American law, you can have a case for anything. Interestingly, under French law.
moral rights to a work exist in law.

So it seems that what has happened is that he has not told them this is based on and Douglas Fairburn, I don't know, I had a kind of look at him and because I was so interested by this story.

He obviously had some success. He's now dead.
He's been dead since the 90s, I think. But maybe these were kind of airport novels.

I don't know, but it's not like they were the biggest thing on the, you know, you're like saying, hey, I've just had this idea about a shark that gets, you know, so they've had to pull this completely because they obviously don't have the rights to it.

First of all, the question is, what do they do now? They've made it now, which is very, very expensive. So they're going to have to license that book from the author's estate.

For me, they should do that because the cost of making this thing. But, okay, it's great news for the author's relatives because

maybe

I mean really luckily you are dealing with what um the computer companies I like to call Apple so you are dealing with one of the three biggest companies in the world and it doesn't really matter how much any of their television costs because it's yeah

they have money right I've heard they've have some money yeah I've heard they have some money um but in terms of like so Gauman was the French producers who have made this Apple will have an indemnity clause against Gaumont who perhaps in this case failed to do um because they would have bought them the developed concept and then Apple would have agreed to make it.

Yeah, you're supposed to do due diligence, though it's quite hard to neg check something like that because you have to, I mean, if someone is not telling you the truth and it's a 1973 novel and a movie from the 70s,

you can't sort of check everything that's ever happened everywhere.

Or can't you? Because I'm afraid my ultimate conclusion of this is that this is a role. at which AI would be very, very good.
Oh, yeah.

Because if you do want to try and check everything, I mean, actually, I have to say that this is not like the most obscure thing, given it's already been adapted. Oh, yeah.

Given that it's essentially called the hunt in French. And anyway.

But AI would be good.

It is very difficult. And there are also, there are always these kind of rights case.
There's one with

Top Gun. Do you remember like a lot of those things?

A lot of those kind of movies around that time, they would be based on some kind of in-depth American magazine article. And someone had written an article about Miramar, the Top Gun School.

And I can't remember whether it was was Don Simpson or Brookheimer or someone else at Paramount maybe had read that and said, I'd love a movie based on this. This sounds really cool.

Lots of things we're interested in.

And actually when they came to make Top Gun Maverick, by that stage, the rights of the guy who'd written it, the rights of that original magazine article had reverted back to the family.

And they said, oh, well, you couldn't have had this movie without the first movie. So effectively, there is a kind of chain of rights stretching from that original article and you should have paid us.

I can't remember. They sued for some kind of crazy amount of money.
That was actually thrown out.

But this one clearly they regard it as a big issue and it'll be really interesting to see where it goes. But it is an amazing, you know, let's say

Cedric Angier

knew. I mean, if he didn't know, it's very, very, very unfortunate.
Oh, you knew, but you forgot. And you think you had the idea yourself.

I've ended up

sometimes thinking, oh, that's a fun joke. And then I thought, it just does ring a bell.
And then you're like, oh, I've written that joke three years ago.

You know, a lot of creators will say, oh, I thought I had this brilliant idea. and I actually just realised I'd already seen it and it was completely it's like in The Simpsons where Principal Skinner

I think is writing essentially Jurassic Park and everyone's going literally the whole episode is people are going I mean it's a movie it was a really big movie I mean you really never heard of it so it's like that um but anyway it'll be interesting to see where that one goes and it's obviously quite a dramatic thing to have happened but yeah thank you for asking about that Henry Longstaff and the head of Apple T V of course is Jay Hunt so hold on a minute ah yeah Apple T V in the UK.

I don't think, I mean, she'll be getting straight in touch, so she's got nothing to do with the French operation. She would never have made this mistake.

Because her name is Hunt. Yeah, yes.

I understood that part of it, but I just wanted to be very clear legally, since we are talking about

that Jay Hunt has no rights to this mistake.

She does not hold the rights to this mistake. Yeah, although there was an executive in 1973 called Jay Shoot.

So

has she ripped herself off? Let's get the old yarn wall out because we need to get to the bottom of this. But okay, thank you very much for that question.

This next question comes from Jonathan, no surname, but actually this question is iconic, so it probably doesn't require one.

Tom Daly's Game of Wool clearly has a pun-based name, but I don't understand it, says Jonathan. Well, join the knitting circle.
Is it meant to be a play on Game of Thrones?

If so, this seems to miss the point of a play on words, as wool has no alliterative, semantic, or syllabic link to thrones. How did this happen? Listen, I absolutely agree with you, Jonathan.

And I've tried to go as deep as I can into

this conspiracy. I mean, sometimes names just come about and just get attached to things.
The only way is that. Sometimes the Hague has too much on their plate to handle this kind of a war crime.

Exactly. But it is unforgivable, yes.

So I deal with it instead. So I talked to a brilliant producer called Joff Wilson.
And

I spoke to Joff years ago because he made a show.

This is one of the... my favorite ever sleeper hits, which is your home made perfect, which is Angela Scanlon.

Two architects look at your house and do like a VR version of it, so you're sort of inside the house. And it's just one of those shows that should have been formulated, but was just made brilliantly.

So, I've always loved Joff's work. Anyway, so Joff is making this game of wool, and it's a big hit, which so let's say that.
And

it's just a name that stuck. Everyone didn't know what to call it.

I talked to another wonderful gentleman called Matt Hume, who is a writer and writes on loads of things with eight out of ten cats and millions of things.

Matt, for many years, wrote Xander's intros to me on pointless when he goes, he's the man who blah blah blah. So

Matt would do that. I talked to Matt, he said

they sat round and they were trying to think of a pun title and there's millions of them. In the end they just go, you know what, let's just not do a pun title.

But you know, Game of War was one of those ones that was out there, which obviously isn't a pun. But they'd go, you know what, that's actually quite a good name.
It is actually quite a good name.

So I think they're aware it is not a pun. Oh, that's good.
Yes.

But I think they thought, and also, also, if it was a pun that was too close to it,

they also might not be able to use it because it would be passing off. So they're aware it's not a pun, but it came out of a meeting where they were trying to think of puns.
If that makes sense.

That would be my favourite type of meeting. The only meeting actually I would ever want to attend.
It's like I want that came up with

trying to do something with Frankie Boyle. And I said, well, you know, something live.
I said, well, why don't we call it the ball variety performance? And he said, great, done, sold in the room.

So it comes out of a meeting where they are talking about puns. Matt Hume says to me, his two favourites of his were knit happens.
It's a perfectly good, perfectly good pun. I like that.

Yeah, but how about this? Watch out, needles about.

I don't know. Watch out, needles about.
I mean, that catchphrase, which is a Jeremy Beadle thing. Yeah, watch out.

He kind of died before Tom Daly was born. Yes, exactly.
So, oh, you couldn't use it. No.

But that's the thing. Sitting unusable.
They are sitting in a room, as I've done so many times before, coming up with puns.

And in the end, they go, well,

let's not call it a pun. But at some point, the name Game of Wool had come out there.
And everyone's going, well, it's a game. And it's about wool.

And I think they're very aware as well that people are like, sorry, why is it called Game of Wool? And the fact of it is made by a brilliant program maker. You're talking about it, aren't you?

It's made very, very well as well. It's great talent behind it.
And it's doing really, really good business. So it is not a story of...
absolute incompetence that people can't do puns.

It's a story of a group of very good program makers going, do you know what? Let's just call it Game of Wool.

But to think it could have been called watch out needles about uh and i love knit happens i have to say yeah knit happens is good uh knit happens is good as well so big that they need a you know after show then they can use game game of wall knit happens yeah that's very very good so yeah it's it's it's a slightly disappointing answer which is which is not it has been chosen by lunatics i'm terrible i've always been terrible with titles with show titles i've never ever been able to do it oh because the boil variety show is is rubbish i mean

i don't think that's true richard i don't think you are bad i can do puns and then think of the show afterwards.

That I can do. But when a show comes out, you think, I just need the perfect title.
The point is,

which was not mine. That's a great.
That is a brilliant title. Because you just think, oh, this show, which seems incomprehensible, but you've given it a name that makes sense to me.

So yeah, Game of Wool is just one of those things. And in 20 years' time, when they're on season 20, it will just seem Game of Wool will seem like whose line is it anyway? So Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Which is which is a pun on the American movie Whose Life Is It Anyway? Okay, which of those is more famous now? Yeah, oh, yes, whose line is it anyway?

And now there are lots of things that are pun versions of whose line is it anyway? Because whose line is it anyway is a very, very bad pun on whose life is it anyway.

Now, whose line is it anyway is the bigger thing, and yes, as you say, at some point in the next 20 years, Game of Wool will inexorably rise higher than Game of Thrones and be a bigger franchise and making sort of $40 million.

And then everyone will be like

game of something else. Or other things of wool.
Frame of wool. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Blame of wool, which is essentially who stole my sheep.

There you go. Blame of wool.
Flame of Wool is brilliant. I think it might be time for us to go into some adverts.
Game of adverts.

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Well, I never used to be organised, but since I have had children, I've become very organized.

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It's that sacred moment of the day.

The dinner's done, the stockings are a distant memory and the leftovers are already being negotiated. So the annual battle for the remote begins.
Someone wants the royal speech.

Somebody, me usually, wants to watch a quiz show. Someone has already lined up diehard.
And yet somehow it all seems to come together.

So the question is, how do we ever agree what to watch at Christmas? I mean, not to jump in here,

I have a genuine system for this.

You know what? You surprise me. Okay, I can't explain this to you clearly enough.
Obtain the listings well in advance of the day. So one way or another.
Do you mean the TV listings?

Yes, I mean obtain the TV listings one way or another before, yeah, okay. It doesn't matter how you do it, you can do it on your phone, but obtain it.

Then, if I'm watching live things, I will insist that we build a shed. I will say, tell you what, tell you what, we have to watch Wallace and Grommet, okay?

And then instead of having the scrolling, which I really genuinely can't stand, and if you're having a food coma and you're scrolling, that's not a festive feeling at all.

So then I'll be like, okay, I've already thought of what then one hour comedy we're proceeding to, then we're doing this, and I'd like to build it like that.

And in a lot of ways, it actually reminds me of what I like to do with the food I'm eating at that particular time on Christmas evening. Because, okay, Christmas lunch, I love it.

A lot of people don't, but I love it. But it happens in a certain way and it's certain things.
Okay.

Once you get to Christmas supper and my mother's just put everything on the table and said, make your own sandwiches, then everyone is taking the little bits like essentially out of the food schedule that you want.

So you're building something for you. You're having your time.
There's a lot of chutneys, there's hot sauces. This is exactly what you're doing with the food.

Do the food with the food what you do with the television.

Make your own version of it and then everyone will kind of fall in behind you. You are aware that your system relies entirely on everyone doing what you have told them to do.

Even as you were saying it, were you thinking, no, hold on a minute. So, actually, it's a dictatorship.

If you live in any sort of democracy, which a lot of families are, I don't want to break that to you, then people will walk into the house. You've got newcomers coming to the house.

I can... by all means say I think we should watch Wallace and Grommet.
But these days, there's always a million things on YouTube that people want to watch as well.

There's always things that, you know, people want to play different.

Wow. But again, I've just made that rule up just now.
I'm such a detailer.

Yeah, I've made that rule up. But I think in the way that TV used to bring people together, I do think food is the thing now.

That's the one thing everyone agrees on on a Christmas Day because everyone wants to watch different things.

You don't want to suggest something and then see like a teenage relative just scrolling on their phone because they're not enjoying the thing that you watch.

The one thing that everyone can agree on is we love our Christmas dinner. We love all the bits in the evening.

We love the fact that someone's bringing out huge tubs of chocolates as well at the last minute. Everybody loves that.

But I think it's it's increasingly difficult to find something that everyone wants to watch on Christmas Day.

And that's why something like Waters and Grommet or the Gavin and Stacey thing last year, that's why it's so important.

That's why the channels, BBC One, ITV, and all these people do throw a lot of money at Christmas because they're aware it's quite difficult to get everyone to watch the same thing.

And when you find something, oh my god, that's the dream. It doesn't have to be like absolute everything, but it can be things like that.

If you just say, hey, it's Wallace and Grommet, it's 30 minutes and it's going to be up to you.

You've changed your tone now. So

how you actually do it, say, hey, guys, it's me, Marina. I'm pretty cool.
It's just 30 minutes. It's just Waters and Grommet.
Because at the beginning, you were like, this is a good thing.

And then someone else can choose something. Okay, fine.
It's the second, well, I think perhaps the best system. And then someone else can choose something.
Maybe oligarchy is better than democracy.

Sorry, did you say, and then someone else can choose something?

It's an oligarchy now. It's not a dictator anymore, but it's an oligarchy.
But I'm sort of the Yeltsin of it all. Yeah.
It's a marinaocracy.

Yeah. That is genuinely the best system.
Either way, I hope this comes across that I absolutely love Christmas because I really do. I can't wait for it.
I love it. I can't wait.
I'm so sorry.

I love it. And I love the food the most of all.
That's my favorite bit of it all. So maybe the perfect thing to watch isn't on screen at all.
It's the slightly chaotic scene unfolding around it.

Something always goes wrong, of course, but that's just part of the story. Tesco gets that: the food, the family, the beautiful mess.
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Welcome Welcome back everybody.

Marina, I have a question from Sophie. Also not giving a surname.
People are getting a bit lax again, I think. Maybe just...
Wary. Do you think? Possibly.
I mean, what do you want me to do?

You know, if you're called Henry Longstaff, we're not going to just ignore it. So, Sophie Bumhead, let's say that's her name.
But listen.

Otherwise, give you a surname. You're right.
It's not specific. Let's say Bumstead.
Like the old Chelsea footballer John Bumstead.

I noticed the new Lego sets specific to Wicked for Good have been released bang on time for the films release.

Do toy companies get early screenings of films and get to choose what they think would work well? How does this work? Oh my goodness.

Well, I'm glad you asked this because when I was writing for the franchise, the TV show we did about Marvel, I ended up doing a lot of research into how the toys and these things work.

Remember that everything changed with Star Wars. When Star Wars came out and that merchandise came out, it became so enormous.
Marvel merchandise has made more money than the films.

Star Wars toys even now generate about $3 billion a year.

It's ridiculous.

But people now say of a concept, oh, it's very toyetic.

And there are some movies which are really entirely built around the merchandising potential because of all these things. I mean, you know, you have to accept that we all love Barbie.
It was great.

But it was a film quite literally made at the behest of a toy company. And they let Greta Gowig into the Mattel let Greta Gowig into the archives and all of that.

And obviously she produced something kind of completely left field and brilliant. But nonetheless, it is a film made for a toy company.
There's a lot more of those coming. But it does take time.

And as I've mentioned before on this podcast, e.g., they did not have any toys for K-pop demon hunters. Now, that was incredibly toyetic to use that kind of grim word.

And they didn't have anything because it just takes so long. So it would have made them billions as well.
Absolutely billions.

They believe me, for the next iteration of that, they will have a huge number of toys. So here's how it works with toy companies.

It's in production beyond where before there's a film to screen. Two or three years before the film's out,

they have discussions. So studios will meet with big toy licensees like Lego or Mattel or people who make dolls or play sets or anything like that.
And

there will definitely not be a finished script. And everyone has to sign an NDA at every single stage of this.
And everything digital is watermarked. It's incredibly secretive.

The companies will see confidential pictures. They'll see very, very early basic concept art.

And at that point, you'll think, okay I'll negotiate the right to place play sets I think we think this will be worth it for us that's a bit of a gimme with wicked because

we already knew this is such a tried and tested property okay so then later on you'll get the first pass of the costume designs kind of the character sheets the world building up maybe if you know if it's a Marvel you know sketches of the weapons and they will start the top so you're really really involved from very from so far back and they'll start working on very very rough prototypes and the studios allow it because they just know how long it takes to produce toys.

So about a year or 18 months before release, they make digital models of the characters and they start building in like articulation. Like is it going to be posable?

Is it going to have a voice element? It's things like that. Because all of this takes so much time.
Eventually, then you get to mold engineering.

That is a big leak period because then so many more people are involved. And although they are signing NDAs, there is a lot more people involved by that stage.

So about a year before release, you know, they haven't even shot it necessarily yet, but you've got a finalist script, you've got the storyboards, and you've got previs and a kind of computer-generated version of your film so you can see what it looks like.

And with these very kind of high-concept films, which have a lot of CGI and a lot of post-production, there's a lot of previs.

So, six to nine months close to release, you've kind of got the studio approval. And then, about six months before,

all of these dreams really sort of start to become plastic and they go into production. Everyone, as I say, still has to sign NDAs, but

toys are still one of the biggest um sources of movie spoilers that there are in in star wars episode one

there was a i think there was a play set was a star wars play set and it was called the final battle of qui gon jin versus darth maul so we were like oh all right i guess so that's the guys right yeah people found out that ray had before episode seven that ray had a lightsaber so you were like oh i see so she's going to be she's a hero there's obviously some she's can feel the force she's you got and they find that out via a toy they find it out via the existence of a toy um episode Episode, some of them are so, like, it's the bathos is really extreme.

Like, there was a Funko pop of Emperor Palpatine. So, like, oh my God, he's back, is he? Because we've got a Funko pop of Ingrid as

Ogred in Doctor Who. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's so cool.

That's on one of our shelves at home. Why have I not seen that? Okay, but I need to take a good look.

In No Way Home, Spider-Man, they did three separate Funko pops of all the... You remember the big thing, Spider-Man, like all the different worlds, the multiverse.

So there's, you know, Toby Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland. And because there were three separate Funko Pops, everyone's like, oh, right, okay.

So I got to say that the toys, you've got to be super, super careful.

Before it became so honed, this process, sometimes people, toy companies would like commit to a character that they then discovered died in about the first reels. That's such a cool answer.

I ended up doing a lot of research before, so it's great to reuse it. David Sharp says, Richard, you recently mentioned Donna Tart's fantastic novel, The Secret History.

Why is it yet to be adapted for film or TV? Yes,

it's quite rare that a novel as big as The Secret History would not be adapted.

I mean, you occasionally get things like, you know, Gravity's Rainbow or 100 Years of Solitude, which are sort of unfilmable, and that's

Netflix has done it.

But Secret History,

you know, it's very TV-etic. It's very TV-etic and, you know, it's kind of gripping and it's, you know, got young, would have a young, good-looking cast and all those things.
But it is yet to be made.

the history of it is quite sort of long and storied i mean it's it's tough to get anything made is the truth but with with with something as big as secret history and also as kind of with with a story like it's got you would think that one of the attempts would have worked over the years that the first attempt was quite soon after it came out and alan um j pacula who did all the presidents men the paradox view all those things he bought the rights to it took them to warner's uh and he had joan didon and john gregory done writing a script for it two of them classy i mean he's an amazing classy director.

That's an amazing writing duo as well. But then Alan J.
Patgida died. And so that went nowhere essentially, which you know is a thing that happens.
The next attempt to do it was Gwyneth Paltrow.

Gwyneth Paltrow and Jake Paltrow took it to Miramax. They took it to Harvey Weinstein.

We talked about Shakespeare and Love very recently when you were talking so movingly about Thom Stoppard and Gwyneth Poutrow obviously had that relationship with Harvey Weinstein.

So that was going to go ahead as well so they went quite a long way down the line. Gwyneth and Jake Paltrow's father then died and various other things happened and it just sort of fell off the vine.

But again with something like this people are going to keep trying because everyone would like to see it. That's the point which Donna Tarte gets the rights back.

Basically if you're Alan Jay Pecula or if you're Gwyneth Paltrow and you buy the rights, you get 18 months to make it.

And if you've made substantial progress during that 18 months, you then get another 18 months. But after a while, the rights will go back to the author.
She can then sell them again.

So Donna Tarte gets the rights back. Then Melissa Rosenberg and Brett Easton Ellis try and make it as a mini-series.
So Brett and Easton Ellis, I mean, they were all at college together.

And they were, yeah, and they were all great, they were friends. They were part of that.
Yeah. You know, exactly.
And Secret History is actually, it's dedicated to Brett Easton Ellis.

You know, they have a very close friendship. So they tried to get that off the ground for whatever reason.
That didn't happen as well. So we've had three attempts there, three big attempts as well.

This is not, you know, people taking a punt. You know, you've got big names each time trying to make it.
And just the law of averages, you think at some point this is going to get made.

Then her next, then her third novel, The Goldfinch, gets made. And despite again having a brilliant group of people behind it, it was a flop.
And so I think at that point, Donna Tarte thinks,

I did not have the control I would have liked. over the goldfinch.
I feel I've slightly fallen out of love with my stuff being adapted. So she just went cold on the idea.

I mean, she doesn't need the money. Yeah, exactly.

And also, when you've got a novel that's successful already as Secret History and people are buying the rights, they are paying you an absolute fortune each time.

So, the Anna Joe Pecula one, the Gwyneth Paltrow one, the mini-series one, she's getting a lot of money each time.

She'll get a lot more if it gets made, but she's getting a lot of money each time those rights come through. But as you say, after the goldfinch, she just sort of went cold on the idea.

And, you know, lots of people have tried to get the rights. She still owns them.
She's not all that fussed about it. It will get made at the same time.
I totally agree. I'm absolutely right.

The right people will come along and it will just be

at the moment. You know, definitively, now it kind of adds to the kudos of it.
But, you know, there's no point in her saying yes now to somebody who's sort of.

Yeah, it's got to be perfect. It's got to be someone who says, look, this is, I was 14 when this came out.
I am now the biggest star in the world and everyone loves me. Mind if I make your book?

I would love to make this book. I would love for you to be across the script.
So let's do that. So at some point, I'm guessing it will be made.

But, you know, that idea of unfilmable novels, because there was a a lot of internal stuff and a lot of complexity, literary complexity in that book.

So it might have been one of those ones that they said would be unfilmable, but they can sort of film anything now. You know, Cloud Atlas, they filmed, which is the Serbian Impossible.

A three-body problem you'd think might be impossible to film and isn't so... It's only impossible to watch.
Yeah.

So it is definitely a thing that everyone would like to watch. You want to watch an eight-parter.
Oh my God, I really want to watch it. So I can't wait for the perfect people.

And as you say, it will be, I think, either big or the people who are about to become the biggest stars in the world will be in it.

Exactly, and they have to sit down with Donna Tarte, and Donna Tarte has to sit across the table from them and go, Okay, I get it, I get I'm in safe hands here, I get I've got the amount of control I would like to have because you're going to get one shot at it.

And you know, she wrote such an incredible debut novel, and it would be crazy not to make an incredible TV series out of it. It's made me want to go and read it again, yeah, yeah.

Do you have time for a final quick one? It'll have to be quite, yes, uh, Becky Taylor. Hey, Becky, how does renting the jungle in I'm a Celebrity work?

Yes, it is not actually technically a jungle in the classification of these things. I think it's technically classified as a lowland rainforest.
It's in New South Wales.

They used to, the first series ever, they filmed somewhere quite nearby, but it was a massive, massive hit all those years ago. And they obviously...

in the pandemic they had to do it at that castle in Wales but it's actually a dedicated and specially constructed set it is always the I'm a celebrity set it used to be a banana it's like it used to be a banana farm um this is obviously more lucrative yeah no no offense to the curved fruit it works because various countries format the I'm a celebrities are set there so you've got a few in rotation across the year and ITV Studios has the lease on it

you know there's a huge number of crew who work on it like honestly it's an enormous crew

and it's got you know a roof over it so that it doesn't it's not complete washout so they can't in you know when it really does get a bit rainforest they they can actually still have a show something i quite like about just a little quirky detail before we sign off on this one is that the um australian version of it is filmed in south africa i think because it's like sorry i mean this is just part of our lifestyle to live here yeah exactly sorry it's gonna have to be a little bit more exhausting than that you can't really say what are the greatest privations we could possibly um

somewhere else in new south wales okay no so they haven't they filmed that version of it in south africa but that is the answer to lisa rainforest lisa rainforest would be a great name if there are any lisa rainforests out there or indeed anyone with any other name who would like to send us a question, the address is therestersentertainment at goalhanger.com.

We will be back tomorrow for our members with a special bonus episode about pantomimes. No, we won't.

If you want to become a member and have ad-free listening and bonus episodes and so on, the address is therestersenttertainment.com. Or we will see you next Tuesday.
Yeah, we'll see you next Tuesday.

See you next Tuesday.