Let the feeding frenzy begin.
Just days after being rescued from the clutches of the Iraqi army, former POW Jessica Lynch is being bombarded with hundreds of film, TV and book deals from entertainment executives hoping to cash in on her harrowing tale.
Getting a jump on its rivals, NBC announced Thursday that it's fast-tracking development of a two-hour made-for-TV movie following the 19-year-old Army supply clerk's capture by the enemy and the elaborate military planning that successfully brought her home.
The Peacock is currently holdings talks with a number of scribes and is close to picking a producer for the project. NBC hopes to snap up the official rights to Jessica's life story from the soldier in the coming days. If that fails, the net will try to secure the rights to a newspaper article or to other individuals involved in the operation.
Other networks, including CBS, are also reportedly interested in getting in on the (military) action.
But landing her rights could be a little difficult, seeing that Lynch is still at a U.S. military base recovering from major surgery from the injuries suffered during her ordeal. Then there's the emotional trauma she's likely endured in knowing the rest of her unit had been either killed or captured and then executed, and that she is apparently the sole survivor.
All of which makes such talk about offers a little premature, according Jessica's parents, who are just focused on their daughter's health improving.
Family members, who flew last Saturday to Germany to visit her, have indicated that they've gotten "about a million phone calls," but the last thing on their minds at the moment is making a movie deal, especially with the fighting not over yet.
"The way we've got this pictured, if they are offering movies, if they are offering books, put that on the back burner," her father, Greg Lynch Sr., told the Associated Press. "We're not going to jump into their moneymaking schemes. That's all it is."
That's not stopping NBC. The network hopes to get a Lynch telepic on the air by next fall.
"This story is Mission: Impossible, but it's real," one NBC insider told Thursday's Daily Variety. "It's as good a story as you can get from this war. It's uplifting, heroic, compelling and dramatic."
Of course, executives have no idea what soldiers actually did the rescuing, what kind of planning was involved in her extraction from an Iraqi hospital and the details of how she and her fellow GIs got into their predicament in the first place.
Then there's the question of banging out said film or book when the war's still going on.
The Lynch mobbing is the latest obsession for Tinseltown execs. A few weeks ago, it was Elizabeth Smart. Once the 15-year-old Utah girl was found alive last month after being kidnapped at knifepoint early last year, her parents were flooded with more than 3,000 interview requests and more than 100 film, book and TV movie-of-the-week proposals. So far, no project has gotten off the drawing board.
Networks justify their aggressive pursuits of such teary-eyed tales not because they want to capitalize on a ripped-from-the-headlines story (honest) but because the overriding message that emanates from them is one of hope in dark days.
In Hollywood, there's nothing better than a happy ending--except a happy ending and big ratings.