Neil Strauss is having an awesome day. Earlier this morning, Robert Downey Jr. and Columbia Pictures optioned his non-fiction book Emergency!: This Book Will Save Your Life and now another one of his books has found a pair of writers to script an adaptation. The Wrap reports that Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, best known as the head writers on The Office and the guys that Bill Murray likes to make fun of, have been hired to write The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, based on Strauss' best seller. The non-fiction book is a controversial and somewhat disturbing look at the self-described "pick-up artist" Mystery, a Toronto-based magician who teaches ugly men how to pick up women (you may remember him from his short-lived reality series on VH1 from a couple years ago). Ari Sandel, who won an Oscar for his short film West Bank Story, will direct.
People's opinion of Mystery's public persona ranges from genius to grade-A douche, so some will be happy about this project while other will roll their eyes. Either way, between how much The Office has slipped in the past few years, the terrible Year One and Murray's hatred of their Ghostbusters treatment, I wouldn't expect too much from Eisenberg and Stupnitsky on this one.
