A film adaptation of Emma Straub‘s “American Fantasy” novel is in development from “Imperfect Women” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” star Elisabeth Moss.
Optioned by Moss and Lindsey McManus’s Love & Squalor Pictures, “American Fantasy” was published by Penguin Random House in April 2026. The story follows Annie, a recently divorced woman who boards a nostalgia cruise headlined by the ’90s boy band that soundtracked her adolescence — only to find herself unexpectedly reckoning with who she was and who she still wants to be.
Moss and McManus will produce the film with Straub set as an executive producer. No writer, cast or distributor is currently attached to the project.
The New York Times bestseller was first introduced to Moss when she appeared on Andy Cohen’s “Watch What Happens Live” on the same night that Straub (also the author of “This Time Tomorrow,” “All Adults Here,” “The Vacationers” and “Modern Lovers”) was celebrity bartender and gifted copies of the novel to them.
Love & Squalor Pictures recently launched two new series, “Imperfect Women” for Apple TV, starring Moss alongside Kerry Washington and Kate Mara, and “The Testaments” for Hulu, the follow-up to “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Next up, the banner has “Conviction,” a Hulu series from David Shore in which Moss will also star, set to begin production this month in New York.
“Emma’s honest yet humorous portrayal of the humbling experience of being a fan is so rare and genuinely fun to read that we knew we had to find a way to bring it to screen,” Moss and McManus said in a joint statement Monday.
Straub added: “Elisabeth Moss has talent spilling out of every one of her pores, and I feel delighted to have been caught in the tractor beam of her gaze. What luck, to have such a tenacious force on the side of this story! I am gobsmacked. Thank you to my fairy godfather, Andy Cohen!”
Moss and Love & Squalor are repped by WME, Ocean Avenue, Ribisi Entertainment Group and Hansen Jacobson.
Straub is repped by WME.