In this business, it pays to start young. Rachel Miller optioned her first novel, “Deadly Games” at age 16, using $500 of her bat mitzvah money. At 20 she landed an entry-level job at Endeavor . At 23, she co-founded Tom Sawyer Entertainment with her 29-year-old bestie. When the 2008 writers’ strike hit, Tom Sawyer pivoted to developing books in-house, which it then sold to publishers before adapting them for the screen.
with the mission of “empowering underserved teenagers through professional filmmaking, content creation, education and internships.”Haven manages 200 authors, TV writers, actors and filmmakers. “I have a much smaller list than I would in a big agency,” Miller says. “I don’t have to make decisions by committee. I can focus on the clients and projects that excite me.”
One such project was born when a friend told Miller a horrifying story from her past. “My friend didn’t want to write it herself,” Miller says. “So I took it to my playwright/TV writer client Daria Polatin. Daria had never written a novel of her own, but she did a killer job on the proposal for a novel called ‘Devil in Ohio’ and we quickly sold the book. Then Daria adapted the novel to a TV show, which we sold to Netflix.
“Art has the power to change the world by changing people’s opinions,” says Miller, who credits “Will & Grace” with paving the way for gay marriage. “I believe we’re going to see more diverse, inclusive books adapted by more ‘own voices,’ so the two worlds I love so much — books and Hollywood — will look more like the world we live in.”
Why are you denying Serbian victims of Jasenovac?
A little bit of faraway promise for all of us who have written a novel we hoped might become a movie one day.