TJ Newman's 'worst case scenario' could ignite a bidding war in Hollywood

Hollywood’s hottest new action screenwriter isn’t a dude — it’s TJ Newman, who takes center stage in a genre dominated by dudes. And this is his first script, an adaptation of his 2021 novel, “Falling,” the domestic bestseller that sparked a bidding war among major studios and producers, including Jason Bateman, Matt Reeves, Neal Moritz and Jerry Bruckheimer, with Universal coming out on top.

Her second novel, “Drowning,” also with Avid as part of a two-book deal, was another best-seller. When it was sent to producers in spring 2023, it sparked another bidding frenzy among streaming services 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 get used to was looking at the screen and seeing Damien Chazelle and Nicole Kidman and realising they had just said my name,” Newman tells The Times. “It was amazing to hear these artists who have inspired me throughout my career and who have shaped the art I wanted to make, talk to me about something I wrote and show interest in it and put their own spin on how they would tell the story.”

Shane Salerno, Newman’s agent and founder of Story Factory, which handled the negotiations, adds: “It’s very difficult when you have four or five buyers, all of whom have made films that you love and admire, and they’re all interested. I try to pair great writers with great ideas. And that’s what’s worked for us. We’ve been lucky enough to find people that others have overlooked – Don Winslow, Adrian McKinty, Meg Gardiner. I think we’re very good at spotting talent. But I think it all comes from a really passionate love of books.”

Newman’s latest book, “Worst Case Scenario,” the first he has published with his new publisher, Little Brown, comes out Tuesday. It is his first book not set aboard an airplane, though it begins when a commercial pilot suffers a fatal heart attack. It’s no spoiler to say that the plane crashes into a nuclear power plant in rural Minnesota. The rest of the story concerns the town’s efforts to prevent a large-scale nuclear meltdown that would endanger millions of lives.

“One of TJ’s gifts is that his heroes don’t just feel like ordinary people, they react to a crisis and take action in response the way most ordinary people would. They don’t feel more extraordinary 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 on the plane in Drowning, just ordinary people who have to figure it out or they’ll die.”

Since 2019, Newman has landed several seven-figure deals, including a two-book deal with Avid Reader Press (a division of Simon & Schuster), a deal for the film rights to “Falling” and a two-book deal with Little Brown. Added to that is a $3.3 million deal for the film rights to “Drowning,” along with a $1.5 million executive producer fee paid at the signing of the deal.

“It’s been a whirlwind,” Newman sighs. “We’ve been doing this for a few years now, and when I look back, I’m like, ‘What happened? ’ It still seems completely surreal and unbelievable.”

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

“What struck me was how arrogant the note was, the false bravado,” Salerno says. “It’s the only unsolicited manuscript we’ve ever picked up.” At the time, he didn’t know 41 agents had passed on the material. “We made an announcement in [the Associated Press] “About the book. There was a lot of anticipation and then we went on sale. It was an ideal situation because we were able to surprise everyone and present it.”

After hearing numerous screenwriters pitch adaptations of “Falling,” Salerno and Newman opted to have the author write it herself. “Not every novelist can make the transition to screenwriting,” 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 film lover and had such a knowledge of the movies that I and they were confident we could pull it off.”

Kloves, known for writing all but one of the Harry Potter films, is leaning toward character writing in films like The Fabulous Baker Boys, which he also directed, and Wonder Boys, which earned him an Oscar nomination. Drawn to Newman's writing, he hopes to bring a similar depth and nuance to Drowning, his first disaster film.

“What I look for are moments that come naturally and where I can fill in the backstory of each character. What TJ provided is a series of scenes that feel realistic, which is not always the case in this genre. Sometimes it feels like things are happening in an absurd way,” says Kloves. “Somehow TJ found a way to make what is happening feel inevitable. He keeps the tension, but doesn’t feel like it has become absurd.”

When negotiations began to emerge around “Falling,” Newman was a newbie anxiously waiting by the phone. But when the same thing happened in the spring of 2023 with “Drowning,” she was in the conversation during a weeklong bidding war between some of her Hollywood idols.

“You can tell when someone wants the book because it’s a hot book versus someone who wants it because they really love it and believe in it,” Salerno says. “In the case of ‘Drowning,’ no matter how high the offers were, we didn’t take the highest offer. We took the second-highest offer because we thought Warner Bros. [was] “The most exciting one. Literally, the executive who bought the book called me crying. The book has a very emotional ending.”

For Newman, just being in a meeting with so many icons was disconcerting. “It left me scratching my head wondering where life had taken me.”

A musical theater graduate from Illinois Wesleyan University, she moved 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 the local Changing Hands bookstore and soon followed in the footsteps of her mother and sister, becoming a Virgin America flight attendant on the Los Angeles-New York route.

The story of how he wrote “Falling” is legendary: on a red-eye flight, using his iPad and occasionally jotting down notes on cocktail napkins, he scribbled a book about a commercial airliner that is hijacked when a pilot’s family is taken hostage and he is ordered to crash the plane.

“His life is a series of really interesting events, because if I hadn’t opened that envelope, things wouldn’t be the way they are,” Salerno says. “If a screenwriter had come up with a good idea, TJ wouldn’t have stepped in to write the movie.”

After the release of “Worst Case Scenario,” rather than auction off the film rights, she and Salerno take an active role, packaging the book and shipping it to buyers at a later date. But money isn’t what motivates Newman, who has spent most of her life pursuing unlucrative careers.

“I’m going to be able to write books and make movies that people read and watch and are moved and entertained by, and that’s why I’m doing this,” he says. “The money is incredible and crazy, but I’m still living in the same one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment I was in when this started.”