Warner Independent gives ‘Arsonist’ some gas

Gas–in the form of “House” executive producers Garrett Lerner and Russel Friend stepping up to the plate and putting their pens to work on Brock Clarke’s best-selling An
Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England. Boy, I sure hope they shorten that title.

John Wells Productions had picked up Clarke’s dark comedy, which centers on a young Sam Pulsifer’s accidental conflagration in Emily Dickinson’s house – a sad, literary tragedy in its own right – but its contributing to the deaths of a young couple in the house after hours. After Pulsifer does his time and tries to get on with his life, other famous writers and transcendentalist homes (Melville, Hawthorne, even Thoreau’s shack!) go up in similar fires.
A serial arsonist, you’re wondering? Nah, Pulsifer continues to cry out “I’m innocent!” after being accused as the prime suspect, and, in attempting to find out the true arsonist, discovers some unsavory family secrets.

Lerner, coming off his recent sci-fi feat Repossession
Mambo for Universal (due out this year), and Friend seem like the ideal duo for this endeavor. “House” episodes follow a delightful, if predictable, formula but it seems like “An Arsonist’s Guide to Writer’s Homes in New England” might get some surprises, or, dare I say it – some skeletons from the family closet?
John Wells (of his namesake production company) and Claire Rudnick Polstein are expected to produce, with Lisa Morales as the executive producer.