Homunculus Productions has optioned the poem The Wanderer King, from the book of collected poems of the same title written by Ted Deppe. McMahan plans to adapt the poem into a screenplay, a supernatural thriller with the working title Risk Everything.
You can read the outline for the screenplay here. You can see a video of Ted reading his poem here.
McMahan first met Deppe when she was a student at the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. Deppe was her first mentor in the program. Deppe runs the Stonecoast in Ireland program; one of the highlights of the program for McMahan was the writer's residency in Dingle, Ireland, led by Ted and Annie Deppe.
Initially she thought she would adapt the portions of the poem of the doll travelling into a short film, and even shot some test footage while travelling in Europe (look for some of that footage in a future blog). But she was also intrigued by the ties between the moden-day couple in the poem and Franz Kafka and Dora Diamant. By the time she finished the Stonecoast Program she was determined to write a longer work, a supernatural thriller that would explore the ideas in the poem about love, loss, the dreams we dream in order to live, and the myths that absorb our stories after our lives are done.