Emily St. John Mandel’s Next Book ‘Exit Party’ Sparks TV Bidding War; Jac Schaeffer To Co-Showrun & Direct
EXCLUSIVE: Author Emily St. John Mandel has sparked a bidding war over TV rights to her forthcoming novel Exit Party, which releases through Knopf in September 2026, multiple sources tell Deadline.
We hear there have been between 8-10 offers from a mix of studios and streamers. Jac Schaeffer (WandaVision) is attached to showrun alongside Mandel and will direct the pilot. No word yet on the plot or genre of the book.
It’s been a productive week for Mandel — the author best known for Station Eleven — who just yesterday saw Natalia Leite sign on to direct a feature adaptation of her novel Last Night in Montreal, which she co-wrote and will exec produce, as we were first to report.
Recently named one of the Best 100 Novels of the 21st Century by The New York Times, Mandel’s Station Eleven was adapted into a 10-episode miniseries for HBO Max that garnered seven Emmy nominations. She also worked with her collaborator on that series, Patrick Somerville, to develop her novel The Glass Hotel for HBO Max. Her most recent novel, Sea of Tranquility, was a New York Times bestseller, winner of the Goodreads Choice Award, a nominee for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, one of the best books of the year according to the New York Times, NPR, Washington Post, and others, and was selected by President Obama for his summer reading list, the second time one of her books appeared on his lists. Other novels from the author include The Singer’s Gun and The Lola Quartet.
A two-time Emmy, PGA and WGA Award nominee, Schaeffer is best known as the creator, writer and executive producer of Marvel’s WandaVision, which earned 23 Emmy nominations, among myriad other accolades, as well as the spin-off Agatha All Along. Most recently, she was tapped to direct and executive produce the pilot for Disney+’s reboot of Holes.
Mandel and Schaeffer are both repped by Curate. Mandel is also repped by Verve and Yorn Levine, as well as Curtis Brown for publishing; Schaeffer by CAA and attorney Erik Hyman.
