IP Goldmine: Film and TV Adaptation Trends in 2025

IP Goldmine: What’s Being Optioned, Greenlit, and Financed Now

This briefing tracks which books, games, podcasts, plays and formats are turning into film and TV this year, who is buying them, and what that signals for your slate.

Everyone wants proven IP. Almost nobody sees the deal before it’s announced.

Last year Netflix and Prime optioned books and formats at a pace that still feeds their 2025 and 2026 productions. The catch is timing. By the time an option becomes a press release, the rights are gone and you’re reading about a competitor’s win.

Producers keep pitching the categories that peaked two years ago, and plenty of studios keep watching the same dozen titles everyone else watches. The question worth sitting with: which sources are accelerating now, who is actually spending against them, and how early can you see it coming.

What’s getting adapted into film and TV right now

• One adaptation category is climbing on a curve we almost never see in this business. The chart is inside, along with the reason the room went quiet.
• Formats still anchor a lot of slates. Which genres get optioned, and the markets pushing them.
• Podcasts, real-life articles, stage plays, games. The newer sources buyers are actually picking up.
• Book optioning in 2025, measured against 2023 and 2024, plus the genres that cross borders.
• The buyers who are moving hardest by category, including one that has quietly climbed and one that has pulled back.
• A live walk-through of finding the right commissioner for a single genre, down to names and contacts.

Deals and moments covered

A Washington Post feature about kids go-karting toward F1 became a Netflix docuseries. A Korean stage play got commissioned before its second night. What counts as adaptable has moved, and the full pattern sits inside.

Skydance-Paramount cleared its approval, and that reshapes the buy side. Freshly recapitalized studios shop differently. We show how to read the next moves.

We saved one category for last because the growth is hard to believe. The players driving it are named in the replay.

Chapter guide/ Time Stamps