“By Tweet 15, I Was There”: ‘Zola’ Director and Writer on Their Journey to Turn a Stripper’s Wild Twitter Thread Into an Absurdist Thriller

June 9, 2021Media Mention
The Hollywood Reporter

Intellectual Property & Technology Chair, Jesse Saivar, recently provided commentary to The Hollywood Reporter regarding a thread of tweets dubbed as #TheStory, now rendered as the movie Zola, which was featured at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Zola highlights the story of A’Ziah “Zola” Wells King, an exotic dancer, who shares a Twitter thread of a road trip gone wrong.

Excerpt:

While tweets can be copyrighted, in the mid-2010s the medium was untested as source material for Hollywood productions. Risk-averse studios and production outfits, notes Jesse Saivar, the chair of intellectual property and technology at Greenberg Glusker, will take “the path of least resistance and acquire rights where they are available.”

Read the full article here.

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