Lyrical Media chief Alex Black got swarmed with “a million emails and messages” on the day it was announced his young production company was teaming with Ryder Picture Company on a film adaptation of Emily Henry‘s best-selling 2024 rom-com “Funny Story,” screen-written by the author herself.
A big get for any studio, the deal was particularly noteworthy for a three-year-old company still establishing itself in Hollywood and going up against the old guard for top titles and talent.
“In the meeting, I think we were able to really pitch to Emily that we would be great partners on this project because of our understanding of the material and our ability to make independent movies — not necessarily indie movies — that allows us to just work more nimbly and do what’s best for the project,” Lyrical Media’s vice president of film and TV Natalie Sellers said. “Emily got really excited about and she actually was the one who really wanted to adapt it herself, and we could not have been more excited about that idea.”
Sellers says the “Funny Story” script “is coming along truly so well,” but it’s actually just one of many high-profile projects set up at Lyrical, which has its eyes on expanding across film, TV, gaming and comics.
Popular on Variety
Founded by Black in 2021, Lyrical has released Neon’s “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” (its debut film) and “Bruiser,” its first collaboration with Ryder Picture Company, which landed at Hulu. Lyrical has since signed a first-look deal with Ryder and is currently producing the A24 films “The Death of Robin Hood,” starring Hugh Jackman and Jodie Comer, and “Onslaught,” Adam Wingard’s action thriller starring Adria Arjona.
Left to right: Lyrical’s Natalie Sellers, Alex Black, Jon Rosenberg
Additional on-screen projects include Henry’s “Funny Story” movie, a TV adaptation of Lauren Roberts’ best-selling YA novel “Powerless” with “Anyone But You” filmmaker Will Gluck, a film based on romance author Brynne Weaver’s “Butcher & Blackbird,” and the Anthony Mackie and Morena Baccarin-led post-apocalyptic action film “Elevation.”
The company has also set a partnership with graphic novelist James Tynion IV’s multimedia production company, Tiny Onion, which Lyrical backed with a seed investment, and co-published the post-punk puzzle VR game “Lovesick” with Rose City Games for Meta Quest.
“The thesis of Lyrical is this idea that we want to be doing what is unique and fresh, and that we can breathe young and new life into all these different mediums,” Sellers said. “I think it just so happens right now the popularity of stories for women and around women, something like ‘Barbie,’ is something that we are collectively excited about in general. And a lot of more female-driven love stories. But it’s also happening in horror. You look at movies like ‘Barbarian’ and ‘Talk to Me,’ and there’s a new wave of popcorn-but-still-genre-blending horror. And so we’re jumping into that, too.”
As Black puts it, Sellers is a “reading machine” who has spotted several of their acquisitions via her keen eye for what’s popular among those in the TikTok reading community known as “BookTok.” But she’s not the only one at Lyrical who is pitching, with each of the seven employees at the small company encouraged to be “their own kind of creative producer,” per Black.
“A member of the development team was just watching shorts on Vimeo and found an incredible short and said, ‘Let’s go find this person. I think this should be a movie,’” Sellers said. “And we found this filmmaker who had no representation, did not live in the U.S., on Instagram from just genuinely reaching out to her. So that sort of idea, springs from everyone at the company being pretty young. And we’re looking for exciting filmmakers in our own free time, because it’s what we dig. “
Sellers added: “A lot of it is just born out of, this is the stuff that, if we didn’t all work in film, I think we’d be reading, watching, listening to in our own free time, anyways, which I think makes it easier to just always, know what’s new, what’s fresh, what’s exciting.”
As Lyrical expands, it’s preparing its first TV project, an adaptation of YA fantasy book “Powerless,” and Sellers is preparing to learn all about a part of the industry that’s new to her.
“For something like ‘Powerless,’ I went after that book and was really excited about it,” Sellers said. “I felt that it should be television, just because there’s so much story there. We’re very new to television, but our sort of superpower in the TV space, at least, is that we have development financing. We can go after big, exciting pieces of IP, like ‘Powerless,’ that a lot of production companies who don’t have financing can’t. And then we can utilize productions that do television and hopefully learn the space and make great stuff that we’re excited about.”
Lyrical president Jon Rosenberg says the company is always “looking for people that make us smarter” and “who can point us in the right direction” in each medium they enter.
“We have the great fortune of working with Aaron Ryder and his company, Ryder Picture Company,” Rosenberg said. “Aaron is, dollars for donuts, one of the best independent producers out there. His credits speak for themselves. On the graphic novel side of things, James Tynion is in rarefied air as one of the few three-time winners of the Eisner Award, which puts him alongside. Alan Moore. And James was the youngest person to ever be handed the keys to the Batman franchise at DC.”
As for gaming, Rosenberg says it’s “a funny one because gaming has such specific architecture.”
“I’m pretty sure any game developer who heard the way we were talking would tear their hair out, because you really need to build a game mechanic,” Rosenberg said. “I mean, there have been some great licensed games, like the ‘Arkham’ series is one of the greatest licensed series of all times. But it’s very, very hard. If someone were just like, ‘Oh, we own the rights to The Muppets — we’re gonna do a Muppets video game.’ It’s like, well, what is the game? But I do think there are these very specific IPs where it kind of could be anything, and those are world building opportunities that haven’t yet really come across our desk. But that would be amazing, to make a film or a graphic novel where it just screamed real-multimedia, world-building potential in a way that didn’t feel ham-fisted.”
When it comes to the idea of expansion beyond just increasing output of projects — i.e., mergers and acquisitions — Black has interest, but is cautious.
“If there were really great opportunities, particularly in the gaming space, that could be really interesting,” Black said. “Jon and I’ve talked about Lyrical Phase 2, which we feel like we’re just starting now, and if we could scale and even improve upon what we’ve started to do in the past year, even that, to me, would be a great goal five years from now.”
What Black really wants is for Lyrical to reach the point where it is “thought of as one of the premier storytelling companies, and if that was true regardless of medium.”
“I think there’s a lot of room for growth in every vertical we’re doing, certainly on the film side,” he said. “We love working with A24. They deserve all the recognition they get. They’re wonderful to work with, and we love the caliber filmmaker that we’re working with. We’d love to scale that. We’d love to scale the partnerships we’ve already built, as well as create new ones, potentially in new verticals.”
This post was originally published on here
