AT THE MOVIES /BOOK IT

Bob Cooper with Landscape Entertainment finalizes negotiations to option Libby Sternberg’s “Fire Me,” a yet-to-be-published comic novel about a woman’s daylong campaign to get fired.

Sternberg is represented by Caitlin Blasdell with Liza Dawson Associates and Bruce L. Bortz for literary rights, and by Ken Sherman for film rights; Amy Byer, a TV development executive, shops the novel to Cooper, former chief of HBO Pictures and a studi executive involved with such films as “American Beauty” and “My Best Friend’s Wedding.” The novel, which had been turned down by several New York publishers, is now being sent out on a new round of literary submissions.

The path from book to movie isn’t always a straight one. When Sternberg, a respected but relatively unknown author of young adult mysteries and women’s fiction, hit on the idea for “Fire Me,” she sensed it had great cinematic potential. Her madcap, slapstick tale chronicled a day in the life of a young woman who vows to get herself fired from a dreary office job -- only to learn that another woman in the office has the exact same plan.

The deal

The players

The back story

“The film quality was there, I knew that, but I’m a writer and this had to be a book for serious readers,” said Sternberg, a Maryland-based author. While the writing came easy, selling herself was harder. Sternberg, a neophyte when it comes to representation, posted the film rights to her own book on Publishers Marketplace, a book industry website that tracks deals. She said she got a few nibbles from screenwriters, but nothing more.

Enter Byer, a TV development executive (“Two and a Half Men” and “The New Adventures of Old Christine”) who read Sternberg’s one-line plot description and laughed out loud. She got the author’s permission to pitch the idea, and wangled an audience with Cooper. He read the novel and was smitten: “There’s clearly a movie here,” he said. “And it’s not just a killer premise. It’s a very good book.”

Tell that to New York publishers. They all passed on Sternberg’s manuscript initially, dismissing it as just another chick-lit fantasy. But that was before Cooper got involved, with a reported six-figure option offer. Now, “Fire Me” is a hot movie property in search of a book deal. “Something happens in New York and Hollywood when somebody makes a deal,” said Sherman. “They’ll say, ‘We want this now.’ Even if they didn’t take a chance the first time around.”

josh.getlin@latimes.com