EXCLUSIVE: Bone Valley, the podcast that explores the innocence of Leo Schofield, who has served practically 35 years for the homicide of his spouse, regardless of one other man confessing to the crime, is about to be become a scripted tv sequence.
The podcast comes from Lava for Good, the corporate based by document executive-turned-activist Jason Flom and Jeff Kempler, and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Gilbert King.
It’s now being developed as a sequence with Cathy Schulman’s Welle Leisure and Main Wave Music. Dana Stevens (The Lady King) will adapt.
Written and hosted by King together with producer and researcher Kelsey Decker, the podcast chronicles the story of Schofield, the Central Florida man who was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for killing his spouse, Michelle. Schofield has spent over three a long time in jail — even after one other incarcerated man, Jeremy Scott, confessed intimately to the crime.
The eye that King and the podcast dropped at the case was cited in Schofield’s most up-to-date parole listening to in Could 2023, which resulted in Schofield being transferred to the Everglades Re-Entry Middle. A brand new parole listening to date has been set for later this month.
The podcast has been downloaded over 10M instances and topping the podcast charts. It was additionally named Greatest Documentary Podcast and Greatest Reporting on the Ambie Awards.
Welle Leisure is behind sequence equivalent to Showtime’s The First Girl and The Lady King, the Viola Davis-fronted characteristic that Stevens wrote. Its subsequent movie is Amazon’s The Concept Of You, which comes out in Could and stars Anne Hathaway and Nick Galitzine.
Main Wave Music is producing as a part of a deal signed in 2020. The corporate invested in numerous Lava Media companies together with the Lava for Good podcasts. Flom had a relationship with the corporate relationship again to when he was chairman of Virgin Data and the Capitol Music Group, when he signed artists equivalent to Katy Perry and 30 Seconds to Mars.
Along with the sequence, there’s additionally a guide deal and a second season of the podcast. King and Decker are reteaming for the second season and the guide, written by King, will likely be printed by Flatiron, a division of Macmillan, in 2025.
“Gilbert and Kelsey’s sensible work has led us all on a strong journey — shining a lightweight on Leo’s case first with the podcast and now increasing to a tv viewers via a scripted sequence,” mentioned Kempler. “With Welle, we’ll transfer deeper into this story and convey extra consideration and advocacy to Leo’s case and to the plight of others who’ve skilled the nightmare of being wrongfully convicted.”
Schulman mentioned, “I’m thrilled to be working with Lava for Good and Main Wave on this necessary challenge,” she mentioned. “The story of Leo Schofield and Michelle’s homicide is one which resonates deeply, because it reveals flaws within the American legal justice system, and I’m honored to assist carry not solely this case however others the sequence will cowl to the display screen.”
“As an writer, I’m all the time looking for tales that not solely uncover the reality, however that problem the established order,” added King. “Leo’s story was notably compelling as a result of it exposes the advanced and sometimes flawed strategy of legal justice. By means of meticulous analysis and firsthand accounts, we’ve been in a position to carry consideration to the case of an harmless, honorable man who has been imprisoned and ignored for much too lengthy. I hope that the work we’ve achieved will assist result in much-delayed justice and encourage others to query what they imagine about reality and our authorized system.”
“Like tens of millions of Bone Valley listeners, I used to be deeply affected by Leo’s emotional resilience, and the shocking twists and turns of his ordeal,” mentioned Stevens. “The present will even comply with Gilbert and Kelsey as they tenaciously resolve the crime that also haunts so many: who killed Michelle? It’s a tense homicide thriller and an eye-opening have a look at how straightforward it’s for a teen with no assets to be wrongfully convicted.”
