Emily Nussbaum’s ‘Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV’ In The Works As Docuseries With Topic Studios

EXCLUSIVE: Topic Studios, the company behind films including Spencer and Spotlight, has snapped up the rights to Emily Nussbaum’s Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV.

The company is planning to turn Nussbaum’s book, about the origins of reality television, into a docuseries.

The book, which was published by Penguin Random House earlier this year, explores the tricksters, innovators and stars who invented the genre; its transformation from a few scrappy experiments into a huge industry; and the morally charged, liberating, sometimes tragic consequences of trying to extract something real from something fake.

Nussbaum, a staff writer at The New Yorker, writes about Candid Camera, An American Family, America’s Funniest Home Videos, Cops, The Real World, Survivor, Big Brother, The Bachelor and Joe Millionaire and covers the likes of the icy Allen Funt to the shambolic Chuck Barris, Cops auteur John Langley; cynical Bachelor ringmaster Mike Fleiss; and Jon Murray and Mary-Ellis Bunim, the folks behind The Real World.

It asks what happened to the first reality stars, the Louds—and why they won’t speak to the couple who filmed them and which serial killer won on The Dating Game as well as reality TV as a strike-breaker, the queer roots of Bravo and the dark truth behind The Apprentice.

It is Nussbaum’s latest book, having previously written I Like To Watch: Arguing My Way Through The TV Revolution. She is repped by WME.

Topic, meanwhile, is behind HBO’s 100 Foot Wave, as well as feature films including Searchlight Pictures’ A Real Pain, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin, A24’s David Lowery-directed Mother Mary, starring Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel, Wicker, starring Olivia Colman, directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, and Michael Covino’s Splitsville, produced in partnership with Neon, starring Dakota Johnson & Adria Arjona.