BOOKIT

The deal

Escape and Overbrook option Benjamin Wallace’s book about the world of high-stakes wine auctions and the controversy over bottles of 1787 Chateau Lafite Bordeaux allegedly owned by Thomas Jefferson.

The players

James Lassiter, Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, Steve Tisch and Will Smith (who collaborated previously on “The Pursuit of Happyness”) producing. David Bloomfield and Ken Stovitz are executive producers. Wallace is represented on literary rights by Larry Weissman, and on film rights by Sarah Self with the Gersh Agency. The book will be published in May by Crown Publishers.

The back story

The payoff from a vintage bottle of wine -- and a book-to-film option -- often depends on when you pop the cork. Move too fast and you could lose the intoxicating bouquet of a sweet deal. Wait too long and the whole thing might go flat. When producers from Escape and Overbrook were considering potential options, they were initially drawn to a story in the New Yorker last fall about the uproar over bottles of wine said to have been owned by Thomas Jefferson, and whose authenticity was in doubt. “But then we were told by [Wallace’s] agent that there was a full book on the subject being written,” Blumenthal said. “She gave me a copy, which nobody else had, and we flipped over it. We had this secret gem.”

The team moved quickly to snare the rights, Black said, “because this is a world nobody has seen in film, and there’s such universal interest in wine-tasting and vineyards.” Although “Sideways” was set in the wine country, the thriller-mystery dimensions to Wallace’s story could be told on a broader canvas, Lassiter said, adding: “It’s about a regular guy who infiltrates this world, and the cat and mouse game of uncovering him.”

Wallace is thrilled, of course, that the producers chose his project instead of the New Yorker piece (which was optioned by HBO Films and producer Ben Karlin). A former executive editor of Philadelphia magazine, he was keenly aware of cinematic possibilities as he wrote. “It’s an amazing story that happens to be about wine,” Wallace said. “There are great characters and a mystery at the heart of it all. Hopefully, it’s a natural for film.”

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josh.getlin@latimes.com