The Assignment
For the ATL x UTA Learning Series, participants were asked to select a piece of IP — a podcast, book, song, personal story, or social media series — and reimagine it for a different medium. The goal: explore creative adaptation and the business of storytelling. My submission was due December 4, 2024, to Leslee Treleven, UTA's Former Director of Early Career Recruiting.
"Select a piece of IP that resonates with you. Think about how it could be adapted to reach a broader audience."— Leslee Treleven, Former Director of Early Career Recruiting, UTA
The IP: Anything Goes
I chose Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlain — her podcast. Not because it was the obvious pick. Because it was the honest one. I grew up watching Emma on YouTube before the podcast existed. So did a lot of people my age. The show resonates because it doesn't perform. It's unfiltered, self-aware, and genuinely funny — a close friend processing life's chaos out loud. That's rare. And it's exactly what makes it adaptable.
The Adaptation Concept
A loosely-based coming-of-age feature. Not a documentary. Not a biopic. Something inspired by.
The daughter of artists discovers YouTube fame in high school — then has to figure out what to do with it. She moves to LA. The highs are real. So are the lows. A comedy about authenticity in the age of performance.
Smart. Self-deprecating. Gen Z-native without being pandering. Think Lady Bird energy with the cultural fluency of early YouTube — chaotic, sincere, and a little oversharing.
Emma's existing fanbase — people who grew up watching her figure things out in real time. A generation that came of age online and recognizes themselves in the story.
Emma is a UTA client. The built-in audience is massive and proven. The authenticity that made the podcast work translates. The risk profile is low. The upside is significant.
Why This IP, Why This Medium
Podcasts don't adapt easily because their power is usually in the format — the intimacy, the pacing, the parasocial relationship. Anything Goes is different. What makes it work isn't the medium. It's Emma's voice, her perspective, and the specific feeling of listening to someone be genuinely themselves. That transfers. Film doesn't have to replicate the podcast — it just has to capture the same honesty in a new container.
The coming-of-age genre is built for this. The story of a young woman discovering her own voice — literally and professionally — maps cleanly. And a feature film gives it permanence and cultural reach that a podcast, by nature, doesn't have.
What I Submitted
"Emma Chamberlain's podcast, Anything Goes, has always resonated with me and my peers because it feels like listening to a close friend share her thoughts on life's chaos. Reimagining this podcast as a loosely-based, comedic coming-of-age film would breathe new life into her story, following the daughter of artists who finds sudden YouTube fame in high school and navigates the highs and lows of moving to LA. With Emma's existing audience — myself and so many others who grew up watching her — and her connection as a UTA client, this adaptation would seamlessly transition her authenticity and humor to the big screen, capturing a younger generation's experiences in a fresh, impactful way."
What It Taught Me
The most interesting part of this assignment wasn't the creative pitch — it was the business logic underneath it. Adaptation isn't about finding a better medium. It's about understanding what the original IP actually is: its audience, its emotional core, its commercial footprint. The medium is downstream of all that. Get those three things right, and the format almost decides itself.
Working through this with UTA's framework in mind — client relationships, existing audience data, risk/return calculus — changed how I thought about IP. It's not a creative asset. It's a commercial one with a creative surface. That distinction matters.