Co-Editor-in-Chief, Film

EXCLUSIVE: In the kind of lively book-hunting competition we used to see a lot but not so much lately, a fierce auction is going down this week with names like Anne Hathaway and Elizabeth Banks in the mix. It's for Yesteryear , a novel by Caro Claire Burke, who has published work in The Atlantic and Marie Claire, has an ongoing short story project called Cover Stories with a following on Instagram and Substack, and is an editor at Katie Couric Media.

The Dish understands that solid six-figure bids have come in from Amazon MGM and Apple (with Hathaway tied to those bids), Universal for Banks and Paramount. UTA is brokering the deal, and the auction is in the counterbid phase and should wrap up early next week.

What is Yesteryear? Here’s the deal, from a submission to publishers obtained by Deadline: Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming working ranch is rustic and artfully cluttered, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each cuter than the last. So who cares that there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hides industrial-grade refrigerators and ovens, her husband is the Republican equivalent of a Kennedy, her eldest daughter is starting to raise questions about whether her mother is a “businesswoman”? What Natalie’s followers — all 8 million of them — don’t know won’t bother them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elitist haters who call her an anti-feminist iconoclast? They’re just jealous. Natalie isn’t just living the good life, she’s living the ideal of how life should be — and just happens to be building an empire doing it.