‘Backpage.com: The TV Series’ In Development, ‘Variety’ Reports

Backpage.com, for years a prime online destination for advertising of sexual services, was suddenly “seized” and shut down by FBI and other federal agencies in April of 2018. The site’s founders, Michael Lacey and James Larkin, were slapped with a 90-count indictment alleging that they facilitated prostitution, and laundered millions in ill-gotten gains from their enterprise. Their trial is scheduled for later this year, but now the story of Backpage may be coming to television as well.  According to a report by the entertainment industry “bible” Variety, New York-based media conglomerate Condé Nast Entertainment is now developing a “scripted series” currently known only as “The Untitled Backpage Project.” The series will focus on the site’s “vicious battle with the Feds and how its fate could shape the future of Silicon Valley,” according to Variety. Adapted by screenwriter Anthony Ragnone, the series will be based on the June, 2019, Wired Magazine article, which may be accessed at this link, by reporter Christine Biederman, who had previously written for The Dallas Observer, a weekly newspaper also owned by Lacey and Larkin. Ragnone wrote the screenplay for the 2018 independent film Josie, which starred Sophie Turner and Dylan McDermott. Biederman’s Wired article portrayed a two-sided view of Backpage, both outlining Lacey and Larkin’s planned defense which they say will be based on free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—and detailing internal emails which appear to show that the site took deliberate steps to conceal the fact that some of its ads involved trafficking of minors. But the site’s founders deny the charges against them. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Lacey told Biederman, as quoted in her Wired article. “I didn’t do what they say. And if they think they’re gonna punk me, they got the wrong fucking guy.” The Backpage series is part of an expansive new film and TV effort by Condé Nast, in which the magazine publisher has created “studios” for each of its major magazines, including Wired, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ, and Vogue. Each “studio” is charged with adapting certain selected articles in each magazine for Hollywood. No date for if or when the "Backpage Project" series will debut has been announced. Photo via Backpage.com