Melissa London Hilfers' 'Hurt People' Spec Acquired by Netflix – Knowligent
Melissa London Hilfers' 'Hurt People' Spec Acquired by Netflix

Melissa London Hilfers' 'Hurt People' Spec Acquired by Netflix

HomeNewsMelissa London Hilfers' 'Hurt People' Spec Acquired by Netflix

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has acquired the rights to Hurt People, a legal thriller from Monarch creator Melissa London Hilfers, sources tell Deadline.

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Plot details for the film are under wraps. Written during last year’s writers’ strike, it marks the rising writer’s fifth spec sale to date. Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter are attached to produce for Berlanti/Schechter Films.

Though Hilfers recently created Monarch , a country music drama starring Susan Sarandon and Anna Friel for Fox TV, the writer is a self-professed justice junkie who more often than not finds her way back to law-centered stories, as she has here. Previously a lawyer at Cravath, Swaine and Moore LLP, she broke out with Undone , a legal thriller described as a Gone Girl meets Primal Fear , which sold competitively to Parkes + MacDonald and Black Bear . She followed that up with another legal project, the Supreme Court drama Unfit , based on the real-life case Buck v. Bell , which sold to Amazon Studios in another bidding war. She was then tapped to adapt the ’80s legal thriller Jagged Edge for Sony.

Berlanti and Schechter come from Fly Me to the Moon , a NASA-set period romance starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, which Berlanti directed from a script by Rose Gilroy, with Schechter serving as one of the producers. Before that, the duo teamed to produce Atlas , a sci-fi action film starring Jennifer Lopez for Netflix, and the queer rom-com Red, White & Royal Blue , starring Taylor Zahkar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine, which was said to have generated a "huge uptick" in new subscribers for Prime Video and has a sequel in development.