Michelle Trachtenberg’s talent agent boyfriend along with her producing partner plan to turn her final script into a movie.
The late Gossip Girl star’s boyfriend Jay Cohen, 63, and filmmaker Casey Tebo plan to convert Trachtenberg’s screenplay—based on Jerry Oppenheimer’s 2009 book Toy Monster about the scurrilous life of Jack Ryan— into a movie that will honor her talents.
Michelle Trachtenberg, 39, died on Feb. 26, about a year after she underwent a liver transplant.
She was first linked to Cohen, whose talent agency signed her in 2014, back in 2020.
Trachtenberg had recently shared a Valentine’s Day message of the pair.
Tebo, a filmmaker whose credits include the 2021 movie Black Friday, revealed on X that Trachtenberg wrote “one of the best screenplays I’ve ever read.”
In Toy Monster, Trachtenberg tracks the life of the former missile designer at the Pentagon who abandoned his job to become Mattel’s chief engineer.
The story features how Ryan, who allegedly viewed “sundry sexual pursuits as a way of life,” went onto help create Barbie and Hot Wheels during his tenure at Mattel.
“This script jumps off the page; a dizzying tale of jealousy soaked in whiskey and clad in ‘50s fashion,” Tebo, who acquired the screenplay from Cohen, exclusively told the New York Post. “I guarantee you, it gets made and people are gonna say, ‘Holy s---. She really did write the best script!’”
The filmmaker also said that he and Cohen, a partner at the Gersh talent agency and his longtime friend, will make the movie in honor of Trachtenberg “if it’s the last movie Jay and I ever make.”
“I would say that he will do whatever he needs to do to honor her and show the industry—that he has done so much for so many in—what she was truly capable of,” Tebo said of Cohen.
About the movie itself, Tebo said: “When it gets made, my hope is that our industry will maybe take a second look at the thought that maybe what you know someone for isn’t all they’re good at.”
The 50-year-old director also disclosed that the project was green lit by a major studio in 2017 but that the deal later fell through because the executive championing it left the studio.
In a statement released earlier Tuesday, Cohen revealed that an angel investor named Tay Nicole direct-messaged him on X after he posted about the script asking: “How can I help?”
“So…. maybe Michelle is looking out for us,” Tebo said of the experience. “I’ve never been a superstitious or spiritual person, but things like that are hard to deny.”
