Magazine Writers Are Cashing In on Peak TV
The number of articles optioned by Hollywood studios has soared in the past decade, and so have the prices.
Photographer: Sean Gladwell/Getty Images
As a peripatetic writer for national magazines, David Kushner has traveled to some far-flung destinations. He has trained to be a cosmonaut in Moscow for Wired and sampled glacial vodka in Anchorage for Outside. Recently, Kushner’s work has required that he make frequent return trips to a less exotic locale—Hollywood.
Since optioning the rights to his first book, Masters of Doom, in 2003, Kushner has sold 15 projects to different entertainment studios, including the British Broadcasting Corp., the boutique movie studio A24, and Netflix. Last winter, Kushner sold the streaming service Hulu the rights to turn his past stories into TV shows and to have the first look at any of his new projects. Executives at Hulu are now sifting through Kushner’s magazine oeuvre to see what could make for a distinctive series, assuming anything is left.