AI Questions Spoil Book & Movie Heat On Unpublished Debut Novel ‘Call Me, I’ll Hide The Body’ – The Dish
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- Jerry Falade's debut novel "Call Me, I'll Hide The Body" sold to Minotaur/Macmillan for $2.4 million including a follow-up, before AI-use allegations derailed the deal's momentum.
- Hodgman Literary pulled its foreign rights submission to international publishers, stating it could "no longer substantiate" that the manuscript was written without AI despite vetting.
- Rights were being sold by UTA and Europa Content, and momentum had built around a huge U.S. offer and heated movie/TV interest before the questions surfaced.
- The core legal problem, per the source: AI-aided copy is an "amalgamation of many other copyrighted works," leaving publishers and film/TV buyers unable to secure a clear title chain or register copyright.
- The novel follows protagonist Femi Johnson, a Lagos-born "cleaner" who trades his origins for a chemistry PhD in Houston and is later employed by a cartel operator.
Why it matters: The $2.4 million Minotaur/Macmillan deal now serves as the publishing industry's first high-profile AI-authorship casualty, hinging on a concrete legal gap: any rights buyer would have no more protection than someone publishing a public domain work. Even after vetting and author assurances, once AI fingerprints triggered doubt, the foreign rights submission collapsed — a template for how deals can unravel when authorship can't be authenticated.
