EXCLUSIVE: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania star Kathryn Newton is set to star and produce the Amazon series Just One Day, based on the Gayle Forman YA romance novels that comprise two books and a follow-up novella. Sherri Cooper and Jennifer Levin are attached to adapt and create the series.
The blurb for the first book, the 2013-published Just One Day: Allyson Healey’s life is exactly like her suitcase — packed, planned, ordered. Then on the last day of her three-week post-graduation European tour, she meets Willem. A free-spirited, roving actor, Willem is everything she’s not, and when he invites her to abandon her plans and come to Paris with him, Allyson says yes. This uncharacteristic decision leads to a day of risk and romance, liberation and intimacy: 24 hours that will transform Allyson’s life. When unforeseen circumstances separate Allyson and Willem after their whirlwind day together, they are left to embark on their individual journeys. We follow Allyson over the next year as she struggles to fit in at college. Willem never leaves her mind and she finds herself constantly drawn back to Willem and that one day. And so begins a quest: one to discover herself and to discover love.
Just One Day, released in August 2013, tells the story from Allyson’s point of view, while Just One Year, published in September 2014, is told from Willem’s POV. The series has been sold into 19 territories and sold just under 1 million copies.
PKM Productions’ Patrick Moran and Lynley Bird brought the project into Amazon where it is set up under their first-look deal and they will be producing the project. Forman and Anna Mastro are also attached to produce.
In addition to starring in the $476 million global-grossing Quantumania as Casse Lang, the daughter to Paul Rudd’s character, Newton also starred in the $450M global-grossing Pokemon: Detective Pikachu as well as Focus Features’ Lisa Frankenstein from Zelda Williams, and Radio Silence’s vampire horror pic Abigail. Other credits include The Map of Tiny Perfect Things and the body-swap slasher Freaky opposite Vince Vaughn, as well as the Netflix series The Society and Universal’s R-rated comedy film Blockers, which world premiered at SXSW in 2018. Up next, she’s reteaming with Radio Silence for Searchlight’s Ready or Not 2, shooting this spring. Other credits include Big Little Lies, the Oscar-winning Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird.
Newton is repped by WME, Entertainment 360 and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller, Hoberman. Cooper, the EP of CW’s Beauty and the Beast and co-EP of Brothers & Sisters, is repped by CAA, Mosaic, and McKuin Frankel Whitehead. Levin, also an EP of Beauty and the Beast and co-EP on Brothers & Sisters, is repped by CAA, Mosiac and Feig Finkel.
The Film & TV rights for Forman are represented and handled by Katherine Curtis of New Leaf Literary & Media, Inc. Gayle is also represented by Sally Willcox at Willcox Literary LLC, and by Hannah Ozer at Kaplan/Perrone Entertainment for screenwriting. All other rights for Gayle Forman and Just One Day are represented by Suzie Townsend and New Leaf Literary & Media, Inc.
