Adapted movie of Powell’s blog is the first to be adapted into a movie, it won’t be the only one. This September, humorist Tucker Max will follow, known for his outrageous stories of wild dates and bar fights that helped coin the genre “fratire.”

Max began posting his tales online in 2002, and his shockingly irreverent style attracted a fan base large enough to turn his book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell into a bestseller. On September 25, the film adaptation will premiere, with “Gilmore Girls” alum Matt Czuchry portraying Max.

Read more about the tourist sports

Read more about Upcoming superman movie

While Powell’s blog is the first to be turned into a feature film like Adapted movie, it won’t be the last. This September, comedic writer Tucker Max will get the same treatment, famous for his outrageous accounts of chaotic dates and rowdy barroom brawls that helped define the so-called “fratire” genre.

Max began sharing his stories online in 2002, and his brazenly irreverent tone drew a devoted audience, propelling his book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell to bestseller status. On September 25, the movie version will debut, with “Gilmore Girls” star Matt Czuchry taking on the role of Max.

“It was honestly a kind of deep, midnight-of-the-soul anxiety attack,” she says, explaining what drove her to start blogging. “I just couldn’t see any path toward salvation, or any way to do the kind of work I truly wanted.”

When her blog began gaining attention of such an Adapted movie, literary agents and publishers quickly took notice. One of the most victorious moments in Julie & Julia comes when, after a glowing newspaper feature about her cooking challenge, Powell’s phone starts ringing nonstop. When the film version was underway, Powell entrusted her story to the experienced screenwriter Nora Ephron.

Max promoted his book with a nationwide tour of readings, signings, and the occasional raucous night out. When I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell hit the best-seller list, he was praised for offering a male counterpart to marketable “chick lit.” For the film adaptation, which he also produced, Max co-wrote the screenplay with his friend Nils Parker.

When Powell and Max began their blogs, the concept of discovering an author online was still novel.

“In 2002, the notion that someone could start a blog, get a book deal from it, see the book hit the best-seller list, spark an entirely new genre, and sell a million copies—without any promotion beyond the original website—was laughable,” Max recalls.

Still, he believes blog-to-book deals make perfect sense in an Adapted movie. “A blog lowers the risk for a publisher,” Max says. “From the start, you can see the audience size and gauge their reaction—without spending a dime.”

Even so, Powell was stunned by what she called the “outrageously huge book deal” she secured in 2003. The payout matched her devoted readership, but she still considered her success something of an accident, joking on her blog, “I am, officially, what’s wrong with publishing today.”

Today, finding authors online is a standard tactic for publishers and literary agents to provide Adapted movie. (Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody got her book deal from a blog, though Juno wasn’t based on it.) The latest trend is that those early blog-to-book stories are now becoming films, which can bring substantial earnings to their creators—and the next blog-to-screen hit could come from anywhere.

Former Delta flight attendant Ellen Simonetti turned her blog into the memoir Diary of a Dysfunctional Flight Attendant after the blog got her fired; she’s now working on a screenplay. Executive producer Sarah Jessica Parker is developing an HBO series based on Washingtonienne, a provocative blog-turned-book about ex-congressional staffer Jessica Cutler’s sometimes-for-pay romantic life. (Another blog-based show, Showtime’s Secret Diary of a Call Girl, is already on TV.) A stage adaptation of Andrew Losowky’s fictional blog The Doorbells of Florence recently played for two weeks in London.

The possibility of making money online entices many young writers, who can easily publish their work on the untamed “Wild West” of the web—a merit-based arena where strong writing rises and dull work fades.

In this space, success is instantly measurable through real-time page views. Initially surprised by their own popularity, Powell and Max admit that audience engagement kept them going. Feedback through comments and emails became a source of motivation. Powell’s once-skeptical mother ended up posting a “tearful and grateful” thank-you to her daughter’s blog readers. Max, encouraged by audience reactions to early screenings of his film, admits to dreaming about grossing more than $200 million at the box office—placing it alongside R-rated comedies like Wedding Crashers and The Hangover.

“Of course, that’s a crazy number,” he wrote on IHopeTheyServeBeerInHell.com, where he’s chronicled every detail of the movie’s production. “Naturally, no one took me seriously—they’d roll their eyes and tell me to be realistic, to just hope the film did okay. But from the very start, I’ve believed it was possible, and I’ve always kept that number as my personal target.”

Even in the short time it’s taken me to draft this post, several of the remaining items for sale there have already disappeared from the listings of Adapted movie. The 50% markdown clearly played a role. Gone now are the Command Z (2023) cap pictured above and its EXT 765 counterpart. The rare foreign press-kit books from various film releases sold out almost immediately after appearing, and their “sold out” tags remain, seemingly to torment anyone who hesitated. A couple of $375 exposure-test Polaroids from the set of Traffic (2000) are still available for now, though I doubt they’ll last much longer.

It’s only a matter of time before the shop link stops working altogether—hopefully the Wayback Machine will preserve it. The fleeting nature of Soderbergh’s online projects is frustrating; the interactive edition of Mosaic (2017) was available for just fourteen months, and I worry that current streaming service owners might start removing films that have never had physical releases. And don’t get me started on the camera app.

What I really want to focus on, while there’s still a chance to browse the remaining items, is the set of limitations Soderbergh (and Joanna Bush, designer and occasional creative director for Extension 765) has imposed on the merchandise. Aside from the Command Z logo goods—whose profits, I believe, went to charity—none of it references Soderbergh or his work directly.

I’m all for the fun of the celebrity vanity brand, but this is an unusual route for a personal merchandising venture. It’s one thing to run a company like Super Yaki, producing movie-nerd T-shirts that celebrate cinema in general. Extension 765 is something else entirely: a site belonging to one man, and a man with a large, popular body of intellectual property at that.

Yet you can’t buy a Schizopolis (1996) poster or one of Soderbergh’s own published books from the man himself. Instead, the clothing and hats are all nods to films he admires, much like the site’s own domain name: the license plate from The French Connection (1971), the apartment number from Last Tango in Paris (1972), or the insurance firm from Double Indemnity (1944). You could once pick up apparel giving possessory credit to other filmmakers—Mike Nichols, Lina Wertmüller, Dede Allen—or a design attributing nothing at all to his favorite critic, Pauline Kael. But Soderbergh has never taken a possessory credit himself, nor has he put his own name on a T-shirt.

I’ve never met Steven Soderbergh, so I can’t say whether he’s personally or professionally modest. Still, I think his decision to make products celebrating only other people’s art lines up with his well-known habit of using pseudonyms. As Alexander Mackendrick said, a film director’s real task is to guide the audience’s attention. Removing one’s own name in favor of a reference is a deliberate way of shifting focus away from the individual and toward the work.

I hope the closure of the shop won’t also mean the disappearance of Fabrizia del Dongo, the fictional, long-suffering assistant who signs all the Extension 765 email newsletters. That name, too, is a reference: Fabrizio del Dongo is the main character in La Chartreuse de Parme, a 19th-century French novel. For modern English speakers, the name also lands as an adolescent joke. The feminine “–a” ending makes me suspect Joanna Bush may be the real writer, but the stylistic tics—such as always putting titles in full caps—suggest Fabrizia might just be another of Soderbergh’s aliases.

Whoever’s behind it, I enjoy Fabrizia’s creative dispatches and the little universe they conjure. Here’s hoping Mr./Dr. Soderbergh’s assurances that the del Dongo role will remain are genuine. Raise a glass to the end of the Extension 765 merch era, and if you do, make sure it’s filled with Singani 63.

When I launched this blog, I searched for others who had attempted this kind of reflective writing in different formats, and I was thrilled to come across Club Soderbergh. Hosted by Carla Donnelly alongside Maggie and Jessie Scott, the podcast explored his films in roughly chronological order, digging deep into research and offering a lively mix of unique viewpoints. The hosts even extended the show’s run to cover Soderbergh’s return from retirement. Although they haven’t addressed any of his work since 2020, I still hope they’ll return to the microphones in the very different world we now find ourselves in.