EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros. has acquired Alisha Fernandez Miranda‘s memoir My What If Year, with America Ferrera set to produce a feature adaptation.
Heidi Schreck (What the Constitution Means to Me) is writing the screenplay, with Connor DeSha to exec produce via his and Ferrera’s Take Fountain banner. Fernandez Miranda will serve as associate producer.
Published in February 2023, My What If Year chronicles Miranda’s bold decision, on the cusp of turning 40, to step away from her demanding career and spend a year as an unpaid intern in industries she had always dreamed about but never pursued. Even amidst the Covid pandemic, Miranda hopped between countries to explore the worlds of Broadway theatre, the London art scene, Scottish luxury hotels, and online fitness. Her memoir, meditating on professional burnout, reinvention, and definitions of midlife success, was named a Best New Book by People Magazine and The Boston Globe.
Miranda teams with Ferrera on the adaptation of her memoir after working alongside her as a board member at her nonprofit, Poderistas. The ex-CEO and current Chair at I.G. Advisors, a social impact intelligence agency with clients including the Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, and UN Women, she’s also the author of the USA Today bestselling novel Someone’s Gotta Give and the co-author of 50 Years: Kinloch Lodge.
An Oscar-nominated and Golden Globe-winning actress known for projects like Barbie and Ugly Betty, Ferrera has most recently been seen starring alongside Matthew McConaughey in The Lost Bus, director Paul Greengrass and Apple’s harrowing survival story set against the backdrop of the 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California. Other notable credits include Dumb Money, Superstore and Real Women Have Curves, to name a few. Ferrera voices a role opposite Bill Hader in Warner Bros.’ new animated adaptation of The Cat in the Hat, out November 6. She is repped by CAA, manager Christy Haubegger, and attorney Jodi Peikoff.
Schreck most recently signed on to adapt Belle Burden’s No. 1 New York Times bestseller Strangers, which landed at Netflix following a heated bidding war, with Gwyneth Paltrow attached to star and exec produce, and Stacey Sher attached to produce, as we previously reported. The writer is best known for her critically acclaimed play What the Constitution Means to Me, which had an extended, sold-out run on Broadway, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, earned two Tony nominations, and won the Obie and New York Drama Critics’ Circle awards for Best New American Play. The show toured nationally and was the most performed play in America from 2023-2024. Marielle Heller directed a filmed version which released on Prime Video. Schreck is repped by Curate, UTA, and Schreck Rose Dapello.
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