“Hatching Twitter,” Book About Twitter, Optioned for TV Series

Lionsgate, the Hollywood studio behind blockbusters such as "The Hunger Games" and Netflix TV series "Orange is the New Black," announced that it optioned the rights to “Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal” by New York Times writer Nick Bilton for a TV series.

“Twitter has transformed almost every aspect of our lives from politics to business to friendship, and I can’t think of a more compelling story to adapt for television right now,” said Kevin Beggs, chairman of Lionsgate's TV group . “Nick’s book has all the elements of a great drama with its complex characters, high-stakes power struggles and betrayed friendships."

The studio named Allison Shearmur as executive producer, but Bilton will get a producer credit and write the pilot. 

The book garnered a lot of publicity when it debuted last month, with several tech sites rating it as one of the books of the year. Its strong narrative, which some say was purposefully done for a screenplay, made compelling reading. Last month, we reported on one of the golden quotes from the book pulled by Bloomberg TV contributing editor Paul Kedrosky, who reviewed the book.

"[Twitter] is such a mess – it’s as if they drove a clown car into a gold mine and fell in," Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is quoted as saying in the book.
 
Likely the quote came up when Zuckerberg was attempting to buy the company in 2011 and his $500 million offers were being rejected. Despite Zuckerberg's threats of creating a Twitter clone and destroying the microblogging startup, Twitter still didn't take the bait.
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