Glossier is poised to get the TV treatment.
Amazon MGM Studios proved triumphant in what was the industry’s latest IP bidding war, this one for the rights to adapt Glossy, about the millennium beauty brand and its female founder Emily Weiss. The book, from journalist and author Marisa Meltzer, became an instant New York Times best seller when it was released in early September. Per multiple sources, Pet Sematary’s Lindsey Anderson Beer and her production company LAB Brew are attached to produce what’s expected to be an ongoing series at the streaming service, should it move forward.
As The New York Times Book Review described Meltzer’s roughly 300-page book, Glossy is “a compulsively readable narrative of beauty, business, privilege, and mogul-dom.” It goes inside the beauty company that built a cult-like following for must-have products with names like “Balm dotcom” and “Boy Brow” – and changed the way that brands interface with and ultimately sell to a millennial and Gen Z customer base in the process. At the center is brand founder and former CEO Emily Weiss, who got her starts as the Teen Vogue “superintern” on The Hills, before rising swiftly from blogger to boardroom.
With access to Weiss, as well as investors and former employees, Meltzer set out to answer the question: Was Weiss solely responsible for Glossier’s success? (At one point, the company was valued at $1.2 billion.) And why, at the height of what some would call “Glossier mania,” did she step down? Publisher Simon & Schuster has been billing the book as, ”The Devil Wears Prada for the Bad Blood generation.”
News of a series adaption comes as the larger IP market has grown increasingly frothy amid Hollywood’s back-to-back strikes, which ground production to a halt and left the industry with little else to sell. In the case of Glossy, no showrunner has been attached yet. Beer, who’s quickly become one of Hollywood’s go-to tentpole scribes, with credits including Sony’s Masters of the Universe, Lionsgate’s The Kingkiller Chronicles and Paramount’s Transformers: The Last Knight, will executive produce under her LAB Brew banner alongside fellow vice presidents Alexandra Banks and Spencer Walken.
LAB Brew, which was established with the mission of empowering writers, directors and actors to be the center of the storytelling process, has an impressive slate featuring additional projects across film and TV. Among them: Searching for Susie Thunder, based on the true story of the 1980s hacker, and Sleepy Hollow, for Paramount Pictures. Beer will write and direct the latter, as she did Pet Sematary: Bloodlines.