Jenna Mattison Tapped To Pen Feature Adaptation Of J.D. Barker’s Thriller Novel ‘A Caller’s Game’
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Client: Jenna Mattison – Writer
Jenna Mattison has been tapped to pen a feature adaptation of A Caller’s Game, the thriller from New York Times and international bestselling author J.D. Barker.
This marks Mattison’s second collaboration with Barker following The Gimble Files, a TV series they’re developing with UCP, based on a novel Barker co-authored with James Patterson, where Mattison is creator and writer.
Billed as Die Hard meets Talk Radio, A Caller’s Game centers on Jordan Briggs, a controversial satellite radio talk show host who has clawed her way to the top of the broadcast world at great personal cost. When a mysterious caller asks to play a game live on the air before her audience of millions, she agrees — unwittingly opening a door to her past. What begins as a drive-time stunt quickly turns deadly, as events long thought buried resurface and Jordan is forced to confront one inescapable truth: all decisions have consequences.
The novel was published by Hampton Creek Press in 2021. Barker will produce the feature take alongside Joel Gotler of Intellectual Property Group and Untitled’s Greg Pedicin.
“Jordan Briggs has been living in my head for years, and I couldn’t be more excited to see her brought to life on screen,” Barker told Deadline. “Jenna Mattison has an extraordinary gift for adapting complex, high-stakes narratives — she understands what makes a thriller truly terrifying and what makes characters unforgettable. This is exactly the right pairing for this story, and I can’t wait for audiences to experience it.”
No stranger to literary adaptations, Mattison has previously adapted two bestselling novels from Confessions of a Shopaholic author Sophie Kinsella, as well as Patterson’s Coast to Coast Murders. Her psychological thriller Haunted is currently in pre-production with Independent Spirit Award and Sundance-nominated director Rosemary Rodriguez (The Walking Dead). Attaching last year to adapt Josh Malerman’s Decorum at the Deathbed for the author’s Spin a Black Yarn, Mattison previously wrote, directed and produced The Sound, a psychological thriller released theatrically by Orion and Samuel Goldwyn. She is repped by Untitled and Cohen & Gardner.
Also known for novels like Dracul and The Fourth Monkey, Barker’s books have been translated into two dozen languages, sold in more than 150 countries, and been optioned for both film and television. He is repped by Gotler.