T.J. Newman’s ‘Worst Case Scenario’ to ignite Hollywood bidding war

The hottest new action writer in Hollywood is no dude, it’s T.J. Newman taking center stage in a genre dominated by dudes. And this is her very first script, an adaptation of her 2021 novel, “Falling,” the national bestseller that spurred a bidding war between major studios and producers including Jason Bateman, Matt Reeves, Neal Moritz and Jerry Bruckheimer, with Universal winning out.

Her second novel, “Drowning,” also with Avid as part of a two-book deal, was another bestseller. When it was sent to producers in spring of 2023, another bidding frenzy ensued among streamers and studios, this time between Nicole Kidman, Alfonso Cuarón, Damien Chazelle, the Russo brothers, M. Night Shyamalan, Steven Spielberg and others.

“The hardest thing to adjust to was looking at the screen and seeing Damien Chazelle and Nicole Kidman and realizing they just said my name,” Newman tells The Times. “It was just incredible to hear these artists who have inspired me my entire career and who have shaped the art that I wanted to make, talking to me about something that I wrote and being interested in it and putting their own spin on how they would tell the story.”

Shane Salerno, Newman’s agent and founder of the Story Factory, who handled the negotiations, adds, “It’s really tough when you have four or five buyers, all of whom have made films you love and admire, all pursuing. I try to marry great writers with great ideas. And that’s what’s worked for us. We’ve been fortunate in finding people that other people have overlooked — Don Winslow, Adrian McKinty, Meg Gardiner. I think we’re really good at spotting talent. But I think it all comes from a truly passionate love of books.”

Newman’s latest, “Worst Case Scenario,” her first with her new publisher, Little Brown, drops Tuesday. It’s her first book that doesn’t take place aboard an airplane, though it begins when a commercial pilot suffers a fatal heart attack. It’s no spoiler to say the plane crashes into a nuclear power plant in rural Minnesota. The remainder of the story concerns the town’s efforts to head off a full-scale nuclear meltdown jeopardizing millions of lives.

“One of T.J.’s gifts is that her heroes not only feel like ordinary people, but react to a crisis and take action in response in the way that most ordinary people would. They feel no more remarkable than the reader. As a result, the reader can more easily identify with them and feel their fear,” says screenwriter Steve Kloves, who is adapting “Drowning” for Paul Greengrass to direct at Warner Bros. “There are no superheroes inside the plane in ‘Drowning’ — just ordinary people who have to figure it out or they will perish.”

Since 2019, Newman has scored multiple seven-figure deals, including a two-book deal with Avid Reader Press — a division of Simon & Schuster — another deal for the movie rights to “Falling” and a two-book deal with Little Brown. Add to that a $3.3 million package deal for the film rights for “Drowning,” along with an executive producer fee with $1.5 million paid on signing.

“It’s been a whirlwind,” Newman sighs. “We’re several years into it and I’m looking back and going, ‘What has happened?’ It still feels completely surreal and just unbelievable.”

It all began one fateful day in 2019 when Salerno’s assistant called in sick, leaving him to collect the mail. In it was a manila envelope containing the manuscript for “Falling” and a handwritten note.

“What got my attention was how cocky the note was, the false bravado,” says Salerno. “It’s the only unsolicited manuscript we’ve ever taken.” At the time, he was unaware that 41 agents had passed on the material. “We did an announcement in [the Associated Press] about the book. It had a lot of buzz on it. And then we went out with the film sale. That’s an ideal situation ‘cause we were able to surprise everybody and present it.”

After listening to numerous screenwriters pitch adaptations of “Falling,” Salerno and Newman opted for the author to write it herself. “Not every novelist can make the transition to screenwriter,” says Salerno, whose writing credits include “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “Armageddon” and “Savages” and three upcoming “Avatar” sequels. “It’s like a different language. She writes incredibly cinematically. She was such a strong movie lover and had such an understanding of movies that I felt confident, and they felt confident that we could get this there.”

Kloves, who is best known for writing all but one of the “Harry Potter” movies, leans into character-writing in movies like “The Fabulous Baker Boys,” which he also directed, and “Wonder Boys,” which earned him an Oscar nomination. Drawn by Newman’s writing, he hopes to bring similar depth and nuance to “Drowning,” his first disaster pic.

“What I’m looking for are the moments that naturally present themselves where I can do some filling in the backstory of each character. What T.J. provided is a series of shoe drops, and each time it drops it feels realistic, which isn’t always true of the genre. Sometimes it feels like things are happening in an absurd way,” says Kloves. “Somehow T.J. found a way to make it feel inevitable, what’s happening. It keeps the tension tight but it doesn’t feel like it’s become absurd.”

When the deal-making began swirling around “Falling,” Newman was a newbie waiting anxiously by the phone. But when the same thing happened in the spring of 2023 with “Drowning,” she was in the conversation throughout a week-long bidding war between some of her Hollywood idols.

“You can tell when someone wants the book ‘cause it’s a hot book versus someone who wants the book because they really love and believe in the book,” says Salerno. “In the case of ‘Drowning,’ as high as the offers were, we didn’t take the highest offer. We took the second-highest offer because we thought Warner Bros. [was] the most passionate. Literally, the executive who bought the book, she called crying. The book has a very emotional ending.”

For Newman, just to be in a meeting with so many icons was bewildering. “It had me just scratching my head at the wonder of where life had taken me.”

A musical theater graduate from Illinois Wesleyan University, she relocated from her hometown of Phoenix to New York to pursue a career on Broadway. Finding only disappointment, she returned home humbler but no less determined. There she worked at local bookstore Changing Hands and soon followed in her mother and sister’s footsteps, becoming a flight attendant for Virgin America on the Los Angeles-New York route.

The story of her writing “Falling” is legend — on the red-eye, using her iPad and occasionally sketching notes on cocktail napkins, scratching out a book about a commercial jet that’s hijacked when a pilot’s family is taken hostage and he’s ordered to crash the plane.

“Her life is a series of really interesting events, because if I hadn’t opened that envelope, things would not be as they are,” says Salerno. “If a screenwriter had delivered a great pitch, T.J. wouldn’t have stepped in to write the film.”

After “Worst Case Scenario” drops, rather than auctioning the film rights, she and Salerno are taking a hands-on role, packaging the book and taking it out to buyers at a later date. But the money is hardly what motivates Newman, who spent most of her life pursuing non-lucrative careers.

“I’m getting to write books and make movies that people will read and watch and be moved and entertained by, that’s why I’m doing this,” she says. “The money is incredible and insane, but I still live in the same one-bedroom, one-bath condo that I lived in when this started.”