Lots Of Hollywood Interest In Making Bilton’s Twitter Book A Movie

Interest is swirling at Sony and several other major Hollywood studios around Nick Bilton’s book “Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal“, TechCrunch has learned.  While we’ve only heard Sony named, word is several other major studios are nibbling at the worm.

At least one of the studios involved wants to explore producing the project as an HBO or Netflix series, rather than a feature film. This could be due to the fact that there are a lot of dramatic arcs to cover in Hatching Twitter, coupled with the relative heat around award-winning series from the online video houses at the moment. Bilton’s book about the drama and intrigue surrounding the founding and growth of Twitter to a public company seems like ideal fodder for a Netflix original.

Sony is the parent company of Columbia pictures, which it purchased in 1989. Columbia is the studio behind the Facebook drama-mentary The Social Network. That flick wasn’t exactly an accurate history of the company, but it definitely attracted viewers — and awards attention.

There are also a few actors looking to attach their names to the product as well, sources tell us. Alexia thinks Elijah Wood was born to play Jack Dorsey.

A recent excerpt/summary of the book in the New York Times paints a picture of uncertain origins, founder bickering and jostling for footing and control. As we said in our commentary, it’s a very human story, and those often make good films. Bilton declined to comment on any of the rumors.

The Bilton book goes on sale November 5. Twitter is expected to go public on November 6, to the tune of $11.1 billion. As the author noted, sometimes timing is everything.