Ben Stiller Wants to Bring ‘Super Sad True Love Story’ To TV

By Anne Cohen February 10, 2015

In what is perhaps the most nebbishy duo in TV history, Ben Stiller will be adapting Gary Shteyngart’s “Super Sad True Love Story” for the silver screen.

The Hollywood Reporter writes that Media Rights Capital, the company behind Netflix’s House of Cards, is interested in Stiller’s idea, though they haven’t officially signed on.

Shteyngart has reportedly co-created the adaptation with Karl Gajdusek (“Dead Like Me”). They will also write the script together and exec produce.

@Shteyngart Super excited to try to not screw it up. #greatbook #SOmedia

— Ben Stiller (@RedHourBen) February 10, 2015

“Super Sad True Love Story” tells the tale of Lenny Abramov, a typical Shteyngart protagonist (Read: Russian-born Jew with a mountain of insecurities), who falls in love with Eunice Park, a Korean-American woman 15 years his junior — all against the backdrop of a tech-obsessed nightmare society.

In his review for the Forward, our own Gal Beckerman described the plot as “a dystopia to rival Orwell’s. No surprise that it’s hilarious, but it’s also as finger-waggingly disapproving a vision of the technologically addicted, oversexed, dumbed-down world we inhabit as I’ve ever read.”

Sounds binge-worthy to me.

Anne Cohen was the Forward’s deputy digital media editor. When she’s not looking for the secret Jewish history of Voodoo in New Orleans, or making lists about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she writes for The Assimilator. She graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism with an M.S. magazine concentration in 2012.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO