Office With a View: Lindsay Goffman, the executive producer behind ABC’s ”The Company You Keep“ discusses the boom in Korean adaptations
With ABC’s “The Good Doctor,” which is now rounding out its sixth season, Gratitude Productions’ Lindsay Goffman was one of the first executive producers to turn to Korean formats for English adaptation, well ahead of the explosive interest that followed with series like “Squid Game,” “Pachinko” and “Extraordinary Attorney Woo.” Now, the prolific producer is setting her sights on optioning a Korean novel for a new show, the first such deal in the industry.
“I feel like there is a real want and hunger for K-dramas,” Goffman told TheWrap for this week’s Office With a View. “People are seeing they work.” AI, she added, could ease the burden of translation.
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The former head of development at Daniel Dae Kim’s 3AD and VP of development at Gross Entertainment also shared her views about the changing TV landscape, her upcoming slate and the lessons she has learned from the industry thus far.
What was your process for acquiring the rights to “My Fellow Citizens!” and how did that project land on your radar for English adaptation?
I saw the format in a list that a Korean network sent me — I have a lot of relationships with Korean networks because of “The Good Doctor.” That one just jumped out to me as something that felt a little familiar, but it also felt original and fun. I liked the characters and I thought the tone was great.
I got a shopping agreement, and then I really wanted to make sure that I had the right Asian representation, and so I was really excited to get Jon Chu on board with the project. I had known Caitlin [Fioto], his head of development, for quite some time. They came on board and then we got our awesome writer, Julia Cohen, who came in with her take and just blew us away. And then Milo [Ventimiglia] was coming off of “This Is Us” and we heard he was looking for a new project. We got to pitch him and he loved it and helped us develop it, and we worked with 20th, and here we are on ABC!
As we’ve seen in the past several years, there’s a real hunger for international IP, specifically K-dramas: “Squid Game” was such a phenomenon, “Pachinko” on Apple TV+. Having come to this space earlier, have you seen an evolution in broadcasters and streamers wanting this type of content?
What I’m really excited about is it feels like a lot of the Korean dramas are being mined — I’m still working on a lot of them — I’m now looking at some Korean books. And there’s actually a project that I sold to a major U.S. streamer on the international side that’s based on a Korean book and in my understanding, this is the first Korean book that’s ever been optioned by a studio for a television series.
So that was a whole process because originally I just saw a logline for what this book was, and I was like, “Wow, this is really fascinating.” And so I said to the publisher, “I’d love to read the book.” And she said, “That’s great, but we don’t have an English version of it yet.” So we had to get that translated and it was a 40-page summary and then had multiple studios who wanted it. I feel like with how fast AI is moving, I think that translating international works is going to become more common.
What’s important for you when you’re not only picking something to adapt, but in terms of the storytelling, something you want to go to bat for and raise funding for to be made?
The big picture for me that might distinguish me from a lot of other producers is I really chase the things that are quality that get overlooked because so many people are looking at the big noisy IP that people tend to overpay for. “The Good Doctor,” that’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about. That was a project that really spoke to me because my son has a severe visual impairment, and I saw the trailer for the Korean version of the show, and I saw my son in that character. He was about three or four at the time, and he had a lot of social challenges, and I connected to the show because the protagonist had to overcome challenges, and I thought that was really powerful for people and their families to watch. I told the Korean network my story about my son and they basically said, “You can have a shopping agreement for the rights.”
Could you talk about your journey launching Gratitude Productions, and why you felt the need to carve out a space for these types of projects you want to champion?
I’m so grateful for all the experiences I had and all the mentors that I learned from, but I just started to say, “You know what? I’m gonna bet on myself. I’m gonna see if I can do this.” I just started acquiring IP and one of my favorite things to do is find that hidden gem of IP and then find that writer and make a marriage. Because I’m small and independent, I like bringing my projects to a bigger pod. Because I’ve been working in entertainment for over 20 years, a lot of my friends are the ones that are running these production companies. So, at the end of the day, I just feel really grateful because I’m getting to work with my friends, I’m getting to work with good people.
My upcoming slate [includes] the Korean book; there’s an amazing comedian, his name is Mike E. Winfield and he’s on “America’s Got Talent,” he just got the Golden Buzzer from Simon Cowell a few weeks ago, so we’re developing a show together based on his life as a little league coach. It’s kind of in the vein of “Bad News Bears” meets “Ted Lasso.” I was watching “America’s Got Talent” with my kids and I was watching his comedy routine, and I was like, “This is a show,” and so I just reached out to him.
There’s another project that I’m working on with this organization called the Homecoming Project, which is like an Airbnb for recently released inmates. They’ve got a 0% recidivism rate. So I love telling stories that entertain, but they also make an impact; so the idea with this is it’s gonna be a show that centers around a not-for-profit in sort of an “Abbott Elementary” kind of way.
There’s another show I sold to a cable network: It’s this book “Ordinary Girls” by Jaquira Diaz and it’s her memoir, and it’s amazing. A Puerto Rican woman, she grew up in the ’90s in Miami, and so it’s all about her life and her friends. I’m really excited about that project because that feels like a point of view, a character that we haven’t seen before, that we’re really gonna get to learn about.
Throughout the years and working across networks and studios, what is one of the biggest lessons you’ve gleaned from the industry that’s helped you grow into the producer you are today?
Just keep going. Every day I try to move the ball forward, and that’s all you can do. Don’t get hung up on things that are out of your control. Some days the ball goes really far. Some days the ball gets taken away from you. You never know what’s gonna happen.
I think “The Good Doctor” is a perfect example of that. Even when CBS originally passed on it, we got the rights and we went out with it again. I sent that format to over 40 showrunners who all passed. Erin Gunn and David Shore responded to it. If you really believe in something, keep going.
Natalie Oganesyan
Prior to becoming a TV reporter at TheWrap in 2022, Natalie served as a general entertainment news reporter. She has covered film, television, music and business beats for two years, beginning her career as an intern at Variety, where she continued to freelance as a TV features reporter. Since then, Natalie has been a Celebrity News Writer at BuzzFeed and contributed to such publications as Metacritic and Vox Media, where she was part of the company's inaugural Writers Workshop.