Warner Bros. TV has acquired the book rights to Jesse Q. Sutanto‘s novel, “Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers,” the studio announced on Monday. Mindy Kaling‘s Kaling International, which is currently under an overall deal with WBTV, is attached to produce alongside Harpo Films.
The novel follows Vera Wong, a lonely widow living in San Francisco’s Chinatown who wakes up one morning to find a dead body on the floor of her struggling tea shop. “No one is more curious than a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands, so Vera decides to start her own investigation,” reads the description. The book was published by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House, and HQ, a division of HarperCollins UK.
While growing up, Sutanto spent most of her time between Jakarta, Indonesia and Singapore. She went on to achieve her masters in creative writing at the University of Oxford. Sutanto is the bestselling author of “Dial for Aunties” — which was optioned by Fierce Baby Productions, Davis Entertainment, and Netflix — “Well, That Was Unexpected,” and the upcoming novel “I’m Not Done With You Yet.” Sutanto is represented by United Talent Agency and Katelyn Detweiler of Jill Grinberg Literary Management.
“Dial for Aunties” focuses on Meddelin Chan, an unsuspecting woman who accidentally kills her blind date and leans on her meddlesome mother and aunties to help her get rid of the body. “Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working at an island resort on the California coastline. It’s the biggest job yet for the family wedding business— ‘Don’t leave your big day to chance, leave it to the Chans!’ —and nothing, not even an unsavory corpse, will get in the way of her auntie’s perfect buttercream flowers,” reads the description.
Kaling first entered into the six-year overall deal with Warner Bros. TV in 2019, leaving her previous home at Universal. Under the deal, Kaling develops, writes and produces new television projects for all platforms, including broadcast, cable channels, and streaming. Some of Kaling’s projects to come out of the deal include “The Sex Lives of College Girls” and “Velma.”
