Sarah Pinsker’s “Two Truths and a Lie” has been “preemptively acquired” by Paramount Pictures for a movie adaptation. The story about a girl who thought she made up the existence of a weird local television show from her childhood—only to find everyone else remembers the reality of it—appeared on Reactor in 2020, won the Best Novelette Hugo and Nebula Awards, and was printed in Pinsker’s collection Lost Places, which Small Beer Press published last year.
As the novelette’s synopsis puts it:
Stella thought she’d made up a lie on the spot, asking her childhood friend if he remembered the strange public broadcast TV show with the unsettling host she and all the neighborhood kids appeared on years ago. But he does remember. And so does her mom. Why doesn’t Stella? The more she investigates the show and the grip it has on her hometown, the eerier the mystery grows.
Deadline reports that Paramount has brought on Javier Gullón (who wrote Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy), to write the adaptation, but there’s no mention of a director. Interestingly, the film is set to be produced by former DC Studios head Walter Hamada, who set up his own production company, 18hz, and is working with Paramount. Deadline notes that Hamada’s colleague Nathan Samdahl “will oversee.”
Pinser, of course, is the multi-award-winning author of Song for a New Day (which won the Nebula Award), We Are Satellites, and dozens of short stories. Her most recent book, the novella Haunt Sweet Home, was published in September.
