Nine years ago Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage turned Gossip Girl into a major hit for The CW by adapting a popular young adult book series. Now, the same pair is taking a similar step by using another novel as inspiration for one of their shows.
According to Deadline, the duo is working to develop Audrey Carlan’s 12 book series “Calendar Girl.” ABC Studios’ cable arm, ABC Signature, gained the rights to the novels for Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage’s Fake Empire production company, which is based at the studio, to bring the idea to television.
The “Calendar Girl” books follow Mia Saunders, a young woman who suddenly needs to make a lot of money really fast. Her father has run up a $1 million gambling debt that he, obviously, can’t pay. When his life is threatened, Mia makes a deal with the lone shark who wants his money back, a man who happens to be her ruthless, no-good ex-boyfriend. She agrees to pay her dad’s debt, and she has one year to do it. So, how does she decide to make all that money in a year?Well, the way only a young, pretty woman can: she becomes a high priced escort.
Mia takes a job with Exquisite Escorts, her aunt’s company, to make the cash within a year. She serves as arm candy to anyone who can pay the $100,000 necessary to secure her company for a full month. Sex is optional, but if Mia allows things to get physical, the price tag goes up by 20 percent. She plans to pay her dad’s debt off monthly, while serving a different client in a different city every month of the year.
Audrey Carlan’s series takes full advantage of the monthly nature of Mia’s work. The novels, which were bought by Waterhouse Press after Carlan self-published the series early last year, were originally released one a month across 2015. The 12 books total have sold over 2 million copies so far this year, enough to land five of the books in the top 50 of USA Today’s Best Selling Books list. The outlet is praising the “Calendar Girl” series as the new “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
Gossip Girl’s producers will also executive produce this series, which is currently out to writers to craft a script for the pilot. The books are billed as romance and erotica, so we should expect the TV show to feature enough hot and heavy moments to keep people interested in Mia’s year of adventures. It’s not known right now how many episodes might explore each month in her year of escorting, but, should the show succeed, it would probably be pretty easy to spread the year out over several seasons, especially with the added dramatic element of the criminal activities of her lousy ex.
Well, if you love high stakes, sex-powered drama, it sounds like Calendar Girl might be the show for you.
