Movie rights to Wright book sold to Mark Gordon

Monday, October 10, 2016
Lili Wright promotes her debut novel, “Dancing with the Tiger.”
Courtesy photo

The Mark Gordon Company has acquired the feature rights to DePauw University English Professor Lili Wright’s debut novel “Dancing with the Tiger,” and will finance the thriller with eOne, reports Deadline.com.

Wright’s book was published in July by Marian Woods Books/Putnam. The author, who lived in Paris, Italy and Mexico, tied it all together in the book.

The report notes, “Gordon is on a prolific run. He’s got the Lasse Hallstrom-directed ‘The Nutcracker and the Four Realms’ with Keira Knightley, Morgan Freeman and Misty Copeland coming, the Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba-starrer ‘Molly’s Game’ with Aaron Sorkin directing his script, the Kenneth Branagh-directed ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ with Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer and Daisy Ridley, as well as the war drama ‘Comp Sand Castle,’ with Fernando Coimbra directing Nicholas Hoult and Henry Cavill.”

In the television arena, Gordon serves as executive producer on “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Criminal Minds,” “Ray Donovan” and ”Quantico.” He is a five-time Emmy nominee and two-time winner.

Gordon’s recent films include “Steve Jobs,” written by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, and “War Dogs,” starring Jonah Hill with Todd Phillips directing. Past film credits include “Saving Private Ryan,” “2012,” “The Day After Tomorrow,” “Speed” and “The Patriot.”

Meanwhile, Wright is collecting accolades with her debut book.

“In her energetic debut novel, the sprawling literary thriller ‘Dancing with the Tiger,’ Lili Wright straddles borders and genres,” Tayari Jones wrote in a New York Times book review.

Jones added that Wright’s book has “everything you could want in a summer caper.”

“Dancing with the Tiger” begins when a meth-addicted grave robber unearths what he is sure is a priceless artifact: The death mask of Montezuma, the fabled Aztec ruler.

Though the looter is in the pay of a vicious drug lord who is also an ambitious collector of ancient artifacts, he decides to steal the mask, setting off a violent struggle for its possession that pulls in a richly varied cast of Mexicans and American expats.

The novel’s heroine is Anna Ramsay, a 30-year-old American with a history of bad choices for whom the mask means redemption for her father, a discredited art collector, and retribution against her unfaithful fiancé, a museum curator — and perhaps also the recovery of an identity that shriveled after her mother’s traumatic early death.

Glowing reviews of “Dancing with the Tiger” also include those by Outside and the Washington Post. The book is also on a National Geographic list of “12 Travel Books to Read Before Summer Is Over.”

A graduate of Brown University, Wright joined the DePauw faculty in 1999. She spent a decade as a journalist before earning her MFA in nonfiction from Columbia University.

Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Esquire, Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun. Wright previously authored the autobiographical “Learning to Float: The Journey of a Woman, a Dog and Just Enough Men” (2002).

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