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In February 2019, news broke that the author of The Woman in the Window––the best-selling suspense novel that is the basis for the forthcoming Fox-turned-Netflix film starring Amy Adams––was entrenched in a bit of a mystery of his own. Dan Mallory, who wrote the book under the pseudonym A.J. Finn, was exposed by Ian Parker in a New Yorker article entitled “A Suspense Novelist’s Trail of Deceptions” that explored how he fabricated many details of his life, including having a brain tumor, earning a doctorate from Oxford University, his mother’s own cancer diagnosis, and his brother’s suicide. The story itself read like a real-life version of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, and now the article will be receiving its own adaptation in a new series.

Janicza Bravo and Jake Gyllenhaal are teaming up to bring Parker’s article to television with backing from Annapurna.

Jake Gyllenhaal is gearing up to star in “A Suspense Novelist’s Trail of Deceptions,” an adaptation of a New Yorker article that will be directed and written by Janicza Bravo.

Deadline reported that Bravo, the writer and director behind the upcoming “Zola” feature, is teaming with Annapurna to write and direct the series adaptation of journalist Ian Parker’s article, which was published in February 2019. The article focused on the life of former book editor Dan Mallory. Per Deadline, the series will center on an unreliable narrator who nurses brain tumors he does not have and mourns family members who are not dead while preying on people’s sympathy to get away with almost anything.

“What may have started out as my dog ate homework turns into my mother died of cancer, my brother took his life, and I have a double doctorate,” Bravo told Deadline. “Our protagonist is white,...

I love when Jake Gyllenhaal goes unhinged. I love the intensity of Janicza Bravo's directorial style. And I love stories about unreliable central figures crafting obsessive webs of lies. Lucky me, then, that Bravo is writing and directing a TV show for Gyllenhaal to star in that features all of this and more! Via Deadline, the duo are teaming up on the sure-to-be-provocative A Suspense Novelist’s Trail of Deceptions. Based on a New Yorker article from Ian Parker, the series will detail the bonkers real life story of suspense novelist Dan Mallory, who wrote the …...

Exclusive: Annapurna has tapped Janicza Bravo, the writer and director behind the forthcoming Zola, to write and direct a series adaptation of Ian Parker’s New Yorker article A Suspense Novelist’s Trail of Deceptions, which has Jake Gyllenhaal attached to star.

Published in February 2019, Parker’s story explores the complex life of former book editor Dan Mallory, whose debut psychological thriller, The Woman in the Window, written under the pseudonym A.J. Finn, was number one on the New York Times Bestseller list, the first debut novel to do so in twelve years.

The series will follow an unreliable narrator who nurses brain tumors he does not have and mourns family members who are not dead while preying on people’s sympathy to get away with almost anything. Bravo will co-write the pilot with Brian Savelson.

Bravo serves as an executive producer alongside Gyllenhaal and Riva Marker for Nine Stories...