When the author Nicholas Binge finished writing his short story “Understudy,” he did not submit it to a magazine or publish it in a collection. Instead, he shipped it straight to Hollywood.
Binge reaped $1 million from a Netflix deal to develop “Understudy” into a series. Readers may never see his story on the page.
Binge is best known as a novelist. His thrillers “Ascension” and “Dissolution” were praised by critics, and his forthcoming novel “White Smoke,” written under a pseudonym, has already drawn interest in Hollywood.
He also enjoys writing short fiction — though until “Understudy,” he hadn’t written any in a long time. “Most people are faced with a slew of rejections if they share short stories,” Binge said in an interview. “It was only being prompted to specifically write a short story for the film and TV industry that made me come back to it.”
“Understudy,” about a struggling actor who unearths an age-old conspiracy after accepting a role in a Korean crime drama, set off a bidding frenzy — and it appears to be part of a growing trend.
In 2024, Universal Studios purchased “Long Lost,” a short story by the screenwriter Colin Bannon, and tapped Steven Spielberg to produce it. Last year, the screenwriter Harrison Query sold his short story, “Code Black,” to Amazon MGM Studios. Both deals, Deadline reported, were for seven-figure sums.
Addison Duffy, an agent at United Talent Agency who helped negotiate the “Understudy” contract, said that short stories are a form “that almost every single agent in our group is selling in a big way.”
Their bite-size format appeals to busy studio executives facing mountains of scripts. Buying unpublished stories also allows producers to avoid the hassle of optioning novels, whose fans often expect a faithful adaptation.
“It’s such a good starting place rather than a completed blueprint,” Duffy said. “Producers, writers and studios feel like they can help mold and shape it.”
Traditionally published stories have long accounted for box-office hits and critically acclaimed independent films alike. “Brokeback Mountain” was adapted from a story by Annie Proulx; “Burning,” a prizewinning art house flick, was inspired by a Haruki Murakami story. “The Birds,” “Total Recall” and “Million Dollar Baby” were all based on short stories.
Writers could once make a mint by publishing short stories. In 1912, Jack London signed a contract with Cosmopolitan earning him $1,000 per story — the equivalent of about $34,000 today. And story collections were considered showcases for the talents of some of America’s biggest literary names, like Flannery O’Connor and Raymond Carver.
But the market for story collections, once robust, has cooled.
“Since 2000, collections have comprised, on average, only 5.5 percent of book deals for adult fiction in any given year,” Laura B. McGrath, a literary historian and data scientist, wrote in “Middlemen,” her book on literary agents. On her Substack, she put it even more plainly: “While very few writers write and publish their short stories, even fewer publish short story collections.”
Now, the idea of the great American short story is getting a cinematic rewrite.
Nicole Weinroth, an agent at William Morris Endeavor who is currently shepherding 20 to 25 stories through various stages of development, acknowledged that the tales most ripe for adaptation rarely resemble the ones in Harper’s or The New Yorker.
“They can be smart and literary and beautifully written, but there’s got to be plot and there’s got to be an engine,” she said.
Genre stories often satisfy Hollywood’s desire for full-throttle narratives. Some of the most sought-after stories, Weinroth said, are set in a world that mirrors our own, with one thing askew — like the alien language in “Arrival,” which was based on a story by Ted Chiang, or the protagonist’s severe amnesia in the Christopher Nolan thriller “Memento,” adapted from a previously unpublished story by his brother, Jonathan Nolan.
“Larger worlds require a larger canvas” and a larger pocketbook, said Jack Heller, the founder of Assemble Media, a production company that adapts many short stories.
The demand for short, lightly speculative fiction excludes many prose writers, but also opens up new avenues for scouting talent.
Joe Cote, a special-education teacher at Dartmouth High School in Massachusetts, didn’t expect “I pretended to be a missing girl,” a crime story he posted on Reddit, to be read by nearly anyone, much less go viral and garner a movie deal with Sydney Sweeney set to star. When he received a message in 2024 from a Hollywood producer, he “thought it was a scam” until they hopped on a Zoom call.
“I nearly passed out,” he said. “I would have been happy with three likes on Reddit.”
Despite the changes to their sourcing methods, agents and producers are still driven by the age-old impulse to get wrapped up in a story.
“We spend all day on our devices, and there are so many different touch points for what ‘publishing’ is,” Heller said. “We all used to gather around the campfire and listen to stories. Now we do it in ways where we can find them in our own niches.”
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