EXCLUSIVE: As part of Prime Video’s continuing YA expansion, Amazon MGM Studios has put in development The Lying Game, a TV series adaptation of Ruth Ware‘s novel. It is being written by Suzanne Heathcote (The Thursday Murder Club, Killing Eve) and executive produced by former veteran TV executives-turned-producers Ted Gold and Susan Rovner.
The Lying Game is a psychological YA thriller in which, years after being expelled from boarding school for a game of lies gone too far, four childhood friends are reunited and forced to confront the deadly secret they thought they’d buried forever.
Heathcote executive produces alongside Gold through his Good Trouble Entertainment, Rovner for her Aha Studios, and Ware.
Watch on Deadline
Amazon has been looking to build on the success of its blockbuster YA hit The Summer I Turned Pretty with a growing slate of Young Adult and New Adult series. Prime Video recently renewed We Were Liars and Overcompensating for second seasons and has Off Campus coming up and Fourth Wing in the works. All except Overcompensating are based on popular novels — as is The Lying Game, which also falls into Amazon’s strategy for cultivating a close relationship with the book author during the adaptation process.
Gold’s own collaboration with Ware on The Lying Game led to him optioning another of her books, Turn Of The Key, which he is developing as a feature with producer Denise DiNovi.
The in-demand Heathcote recently co-wrote the Netflix/Amblin film The Thursday Murder Club starring Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan and is an executive producer on the upcoming Peacock/Media Res series The Miniature Wife. She also is writing and executive producing the Best Offer Wins book adaptation in development at Hulu from 20th TV and Entertainment 360, with Greta Lee attached to star. The Lying Game has her in first position, I hear.
Heathcote was previously the showrunner and executive producer of Season 3 of BBC America/AMC’s Killing Eve and executive produced Apple TV+’s The Crowded Room. She is repped by CAA, Circle Management and Production and Jackoway Austen Tyerman Wertheimer Mandelbaum.
Published in 2017, The Lying Game was Ware’s third novel. It was an instant New York Times bestseller and a Reese’s Bookclub Pick. Ware also is the author of thrillers In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10 — which was turned into an upcoming Netflix movie starring Keira Knightley, Guy Pearce, and Hannah Waddingham — The Death of Mrs Westaway, One by One, The It Girl , Zero Days, One Perfect Couple and The Woman in Suite 11. She is repped by Rich Green at The Gotham Group on behalf of Eve White Literary Agency.
Gold most recently served as SVP development at Fox Entertainment Studios. Prior to that, he was SVP Scripted Programming for the Paramount Network, where he helped develop Yellowstone and Waco, and SVP Series Development at Fox where he developed Prison Break and Bones. His resume also includes stints as President of Television at Parkes+Macdonald, Head of Television for Deuce Three Productions and SVP Series Development for Spelling Television.
Rovner is executive producing CBS’ upcoming cooking competition series America’s Culinary Cup starring and exec produced by Padma Lakshmi. She previously was Chairman of Entertainment Content at NBCUniversal Television and Streaming where she greenlighted such series as Night Court, Ted, Traitors and Poker Face. Before that, she spent 22 years at Warner Bros., starting as Director of Drama Development and rising to EVP Development at WBTV and Co-President of Warner Horizon Scripted Television and then President of Warner Bros Television. During her tenure, she developed or oversaw 18 series that reached the 100-episode milestone. Rovner is repped by CAA and Felker, Toczek, Suddleson, McGinnis, Ryan.