Super-Producer Joel Silver Developing Transgender-Themed Series New People

For the past three decades, Joel Silver has been one of the most powerful producers in Hollywood, having been behind Die Hard, Predator, The Matrix, Orphan, Sherlock Holmes and many more. Now he’s turned his attention to something less action-packed but potentially just as interesting. He’s set to produce a transgender-themed show called New People, based on the New York Times bestselling book, Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family, by Pulitzer Prize winner, Amy Ellis Nutt.

Here’s the synopsis of the book from Amazon, ‘“Why IS it such a big deal to everyone what somebody has in their pants?” Excellent question, posed by an unusually astute transgender girl, the subject of Amy Ellis Nutt’s emotional and illuminating Becoming Nicole. It’s also a little ironic, since Nicole’s story makes a bit of a deal of it, but in a much different way than other stories we’ve been hearing lately, from celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner and television shows like Transparent. Nicole, her twin brother Jonas, mom Kelly, and dad Wayne, are your typical middle class American family. They live next door to you–are shuttling from work, to Cub Scouts, to softball practice….

‘They’re also coming to terms with the fact that one of their own has Gender Dysphoria, a medical condition whereby a person does not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth. And so Wayne and Kelly Maines discover that they don’t have two sons at all, but a son and a daughter. This is a particularly hard pill for Republican, Air Force veteran, Wayne, to swallow, and his journey from denial to accepting and championing his daughter, is one of the more powerful and moving side narratives in a book chock full of them.’

Don Roos (The Opposite Of Sex, Bounce, Marley & Me) is writing the adaptation, which is being backed by Lionsgate Television. It doesn’t appear the show has found a broadcast home yet.