Bon Jovi and others option Jessica Blank's "Almost Home"

Jon Bon Jovi, along with Vector principals Jack Rovner and Ken Levitan, have optioned Jessica Blank’s fiction debut, ALMOST HOME. The announcement comes two months before Almost Home’s print release, which is planned for October 23, 2007. Ms. Blank, an actor and writer, along with husband Erik Jensen, previously teamed on their acclaimed play The Exonerated, and have already begun work on the Almost Home screenplay, which Bon Jovi, Rovner, and Levitan will produce. The Gersh Agency handled the deal for JBJ and Vector Management, as well as author and screenwriters Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen. The writer’s deal was made on behalf of the writers’ rep Joe Veltre at Artists Literary Group.

Almost Home introduces a group of homeless teens whose lives intersect on the streets of Los Angeles. The book paints an explicit, gut-wrenching picture of a Hollywood inhabited by kids struggling to find themselves in a world that wants to tear them apart. The ensemble of unique characters, bound together by an outlaw code, includes Eeyore, a privileged pre-teen who flees the seeming tranquility of a Hollywood Hills home; Squid, an anti-hero determined to create his own “sidewalk family” after surviving too many foster homes to count; Scabius, a street punk hardened by an abusive dad; Critter, a heroin dealer with movie-star looks and vulnerable heart; and Tracy, the charismatic, damaged girl who changes each of them irrevocably.

“Jessica has written an extraordinary story whose characters remind us that, regardless of their tough exterior, these kids are just kids,” stated Rovner. “In the tradition of stories like The Outsiders, Almost Home is shocking, vivid, and so compelling that by the end, you’ll find yourself wanting to help keep these kids from creating their own doom.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jessica Blank is an actor and writer. In 2002, Jessica (with husband Erik Jensen) wrote The Exonerated, a play based on interviews they conducted with over 40 exonerated death row inmates. Listed as one of 2002’s best by Time Magazine and the New York Times, The Exonerated was made into a movie, directed by Bob Balaban and starring Brian Dennehy, Danny Glover, Delroy Lindo, Aidan Quinn, and Susan Sarandon. Jessica Blank appeared on Rescue Me, The Bronx is Burning, and Law and Order: CI, among others. Erik Jensen is an actor and writer who most recently starred as Thurman Munson in ESPN's The Bronx is Burning. Blank’s first novel, Almost Home, debuts this October 23, 2007 from Hyperion Books for Children, an imprint of Disney Book Group.