Michael Lewis & Hollywood

The author of "Liar's Poker" and "Moneyball" - and one of the best business writers around - has finally gotten one of his books made into a movie. It's "The Blind Side," the amazing story of Baltimore Ravens tackle Michael Oher and how he overcame all kinds of obstacles growing up (it opens Friday). As for Lewis' other books, Hollywood has been less than kind. From NY magazine's Vulture:

Do your books just get optioned and never made into movies? Yes! Bought, actually. If you option it, it's a small sum of money and it expires. If you buy it, it's a larger sum of money and they own it forever. So if they don't make it, it's gone. So, I mean, Warner Bros. owns Liars' Poker and I think they've put something like $2 million into it already and it's just vanished. All right, look, the Hollywood development process, someone some day is going to write something really good about it. It doesn't, to my eyes, make a lot of sense. They waste a lot of money and it's not clear if there's any kind of logic to the process other than the enthusiasm of whoever happens to have bought it. What was weird about this case was it was different from every other experience that I've had, in that it almost didn't matter who had bought it. Fox bought it in the beginning, but it felt like, well, if they weren't going to do it, someone was going to do it. So it was going to be wrestled out of Fox and to somewhere else, and that's what happened. Fox bought it and decided not to make it.

Why'd they decide not to make it?
I'm being honest when I tell you I have no idea. The best writer in Hollywood is a dead writer. I mean, it would be better if I was dead, as an author. I have no place in the process! None. I mean, I've written this book. Someone will need to come along, like John Lee did, and if it's going to be any good, they've got to sort of break it and redo it, as they did...

And what of the Liars' Poker movie?
Dead, I think. Completely dead.