Hollywood Ventures Group has optioned Namratha Stanley’s memoir “Vineyard Melody” for a film adaptation, with the deal closed during the Cannes Film Festival.
HVG co-founder Glenn Gainor has had director conversations in Cannes as the company charts the project’s development path.
Published by Regalo Press, the memoir follows Stanley from a decade-plus of domestic abuse in Bangalore to the vineyards of Bordeaux. The turning point comes when a violent attack by her husband nearly kills both her and her daughter. Stanley boards a plane to France to pursue an MBA, leaving her daughter in her parents’ care while she establishes herself abroad, and eventually builds her own wine label while fighting to bring her daughter out of India to join her.
“Understanding her origin story, I realized I was looking at a very powerful woman, a very strong person, a person of conviction and a beautiful moral compass,” Gainor says.
Gainor built Screen Gems’ physical production department at Sony Pictures, having previously produced three features for Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison label – “Strange Wilderness,” “Grandma’s Boy,” and “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.” He later oversaw Amazon MGM productions including “Being the Ricardos,” “The Tender Bar,” and “Red One,” and received the Social Impact Producer of the Year award at the 2024 Venice Film Festival. He tells Variety he sees in the material a quality central to the projects HVG pursues.
