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Sony obtains rights to Facebook exec Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’

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“Lean In,” the bestselling nonfiction book by Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg about the dearth of women leaders in the corporate world and what can be done about it, is on its way to the big screen.

Sony Pictures has obtained film rights to “Lean In” and tapped Nell Scovell, who helped Sandberg pen the book, to write the script, Deadline reports. Scovell is also a veteran TV writer and director whose credits include “Murphy Brown,” “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” and “Monk.”

As the chief operating officer of Facebook Inc., Sandberg, 44, is one of the most prominent women in the tech sector. According to Bloomberg, she became one of the world’s youngest female billionaires this week.

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In a review of “Lean In” for the Times, Rebecca Traister described Sandberg’s book as “a muscular manifesto on the gender inequities of the professional world.” The film version of “Lean In,” however, won’t take the form of a manifesto or a biography of Sandberg. Rather, it will be a narrative film exploring the themes found in the book.

In recent years, nonfiction books such as “Moneyball,” “Eat, Pray, Love” and “The Accidental Billionaires” have made it to the multiplex — the latter as “The Social Network” — but those films also benefited from built-in dramatic arcs.

Crafting a narrative feature out of “Lean In” could prove more of a challenge since, as Traister wrote, “it’s a brisk mix of research, analysis and anecdote.” Not that Sandberg and Scovell are strangers to challenge.

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