Senior Managing Editor
November 30, 2022 10:00am
EXCLUSIVE: Jeff Wachtel’s Future Shack Entertainment has acquired Kevin Wilson’s short story Grand Stand-In to develop as a continuing series, with Gretchen Enders (WandaVision, Queen America) attached to adapt and produce the project.
In Wilson’s short story, an unmarried woman in her mid-fifties takes a job as a “supplemental family provider” with Grand Stand-In, a company that facilitates matches for well-to-do couples who have lost touch with their parents due to death, disease or distance; but who still want their children to have the “grandparent experience.” It all works out until the stand-in has to disengage from a family she’s become attached to.
Grand Stand-In is included in Wilson’s Tunneling To the Center of the Earth, a collection of short stories. Wilson’s The Family Fang novel was adapted into a 2015 feature with Jason Bateman, Nicole Kidman and Christopher Walken. His best-selling 2019 work Nothing to See Here is in development at Elizabeth Gabler’s 3000, and his fifth novel, Now Is Not the Time to Panic, hit bookshelves this month to rave reviews.
“I’ve been in love with Kevin Wilson’s writing since my sister first gave me a copy of Nothing To See Here, said Future Shack CEO Wachtel. “It’s literally a wish fulfilled to be able to work on one of his brilliant stories.”
Enders added: “It’s not often I immediately spark to source material like Kevin Wilson’s Grand Stand-In. And to be paired with the Future Shack team – one that I’m in such lockstep with creatively – is a dream scenario for a writer.”
Enders most recently served as supervising producer and writer on Marvel’s WandaVision on Disney+. She previously served as a producer and writer on Facebook Watch series Queen America.
Former USA Network and Universal Content Productions studio president Wachtel founded Future Shack last July. Current projects include Walter Mosley’s The Long Fall; sci fi classic Ender’s Game, which Future Shack is producing with Gigi Pritzker’s Madison Wells; and Iuliia Mendel’s memoir The Fight of Our Lives, her account of her time as press secretary for Ukrainian president Vlodymyr Zelensky.
Wilson is repped by United Talent Agency and The Book Group. Pamela Parker, head of business affairs at Future Shack, negotiated for the buyer. Enders is repped by Verve.