Random House JV options TV rights to teen novel

Random House Children’s Screen Entertainment has optioned worldwide rights to teen author Beth Reekles debut novel The Kissing Booth.

RHCSE, a joint venture of Random House Children’s Publishers UK and toon firm Komixx Entertainment, will seek to develop the title for TV and film. It will also have rights on any subsequent follow-ups.

RHCP UK, whose parent Random House this month merged with rival publisher Penguin, released the title as an e-book in December last year and scored huge digital sales. A paperback followed in April.

The Kissing Booth follows on an innocent teenager that comes face-to-face with her secret crush in a school carnival-kissing booth.

“Securing the worldwide rights to such an accomplished teen author – the subject of a phenomenal amount of media and online interest – is fantastic,” said Andrew Cole-Bulgin, partner and head of film and TV, RHCSE. “From our first conversation over a cup of tea in Paddington station, we instantly recognised why Beth became the most-viewed, most-commented-on teen fiction sensation on Wattpad, with the story receiving nineteen million reads, forty thousand comments and winning the Most Popular Teen Fiction Watty Award.”