EXCLUSIVE: New Line won a competitive pitch for the YA novel The Distance from Me to You for HBO Max. Sabrina Carpenter is attached to star and executive produce. Tiffany Paulsen will adapt the Marina Gessner novel.
The Cartel’s Stan Spry will produce with Danielle Fishel executive producing. The pitch had other offers and sold for mid-six figures.
In the novel, two teens running from very different lives meet and fall in love on the Appalachian Trail. But what starts as a coming-of-age story of first love soon turns into a wilderness thriller when they find themselves dangerously lost and fighting for survival. Paulsen, who wrote Nancy Drew and Disney Channel’s Adventures in Babysitting, scripted the Netflix film Holidate, and sold to that streamer an original pitch she’ll write and direct with Kristen Chenoweth starring. She’s currently writing About Fate for Emma Roberts to star in.