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Exclusive: Aaron Magnani has optioned screen rights to Walker Percy’s New York Times bestseller The Second Coming, with plans to develop the novel for film.

He’s currently in search of a director for the adaptation and will produce via under his Aaron Magnani Productions banner. Peter Arneson adapted the script and will executive produce.

The story centers on a wealthy, suicidal widower who searches for proof of God but finds much more when he meets a young woman fugitive from a mental hospital. Influenced by the real-life suicides of Percy’s father and grandfather and suspected suicide of his mother, the plot combines comedy, tragedy and romance, with themes of alienation and redemption.

“This story is very relatable to the world we have been living in,” said Magnani. “And the adaptation is as much a director’s piece as an actor’s piece and incredible character study.”

Percy...

Exclusive: Aaron Magnani has optioned Laura Munson’s bestselling novel Willa’s Grove for film, setting screenwriter Sarah Hopkins to adapt it for the screen.

The story revolves around four women, each adrift in their own way, who discover the power of sisterhood as they converge in the wilds of Montana to figure out their next act. Its protagonist, Willa Silvester, is found reeling from the death of her beloved husband and the reality that she must say goodbye to the small mountain town they founded together. She then must face the tough question staring her in the face: So now what?

Magnani will produce the feature adaptation under his Aaron Magnani Productions banner, with Brendan Deneen and Josh Stanton of Blackstone serving as exec producers.

Munson also authored the New York Times bestseller This Is Not The Story You Think It Is, which chronicles her journey through her own midlife crossroads.

Exclusive: Aaron Magnani has acquired rights to Capital Crimes, the 32-part crime thriller book series originated by President Harry S. Truman’s daughter Margaret Truman, with plans to adapt them into a TV series.

Magnani will develop and produce the series adaptation via his Aaron Magnani Productions.

The potential series will center on the books’ hero Robert Brixton, a rugged former cop and special operator who served with Sitqual, a private security arm of the State Department. Brixton’s skills, as one of the few internationally licensed private investigators, are put to use against an assortment of villains and plots seeking to do the country great harm; all the books are set in Washington, D.C. Tortured by witnessing the death of his daughter in a terrorist bombing there, Brixton is guided by an unrelenting desire to safeguard the innocent. He’s currently engaged to longtime fiancée Flo Combs, and...

Over the weekend, “Saturday Night Live” writer Katie Rich tweeted that Barron Trump might be America’s “first homeschool shooter.” She was roundly criticized and later deleted the tweet, and her entire profile. She was one of many people over the years who has broken the tacit rule that presidential children should be off-limits. Margaret Truman In 1950, President Truman wrote a famously angry letter to Paul Hume, who criticized the singing of Truman’s daughter, Margaret. “Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens, you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!