There are books that arrive with mystery, then refuse to go quietly. Anonymous Jane is one of them. Published in 2022 by Neotext, a digital imprint built to develop original fiction expressly for film and television, the action-spy novel intentionally launched with no publicity campaign, no press tour, and no algorithmic boost. It reached readers the old-fashioned way — word of mouth, secondhand discovery, the slow burn of genuine enthusiasm. Now, three years after its purposefully mysterious Neotext debut, the novel has drawn a major creative team and a trade announcement on Deadline that positions it squarely within the adaptation conversation.
Director Alice Waddington is attached to co-write and direct the feature film. Emmy-nominated and Taurus Award-winning action producer Philip J. Silvera joins as action producer and action designer. Russell Ackerman, John Schoenfelder, and Jay Schuminsky will produce for Neotext, with Range’s Austin Lantero executive producing. Casting and co-production discussions are currently underway.
A Novel That Found Its Audience Anyway
Anonymous Jane was written by Luke Preston under the pen name Jack Quaid, a pulp-fiction persona constructed to evoke the anarchic, paperback energy of late-20th-century genre fiction. The pseudonym was designed to give the novel the texture of a lost underground classic rather than a freshly manufactured property. Preston drew on the tradition of Richard Stark and Raymond Chandler, filtered through a voice that is distinctly contemporary, female-driven, and uncompromising in its R-rated ambition.
The novel follows Jane, a highly trained deep-cover operative living a fractured double life, who is pulled back into a deadly international conspiracy. The story forces her to confront the identities she has kept violently separate — a premise that blends psychological tension with the propulsive rhythm of classic spy fiction. Satirical espionage, dark comedy, and heightened action sit together without apology. The book occupies a tonal register that is genuinely rare: female-led, commercially legible, and built around character rather than spectacle.
Preston is the author of the bestselling novels Dark City Blue and Out of Exile, and his work has been recognized by The Inside Film Awards, MTV, and The ATOM Awards. Anonymous Jane was published alongside original artwork by Butcher Billy, whose pop culture-driven visual style gave the novel its distinctive, pulp-saturated aesthetic. The book is available now.
The Neotext Model and Why It Matters for Anonymous Jane
Neotext was built on a premise that runs counter to how most publishing works. Rather than acquiring existing books and hoping for screen interest, the imprint engineers original IP from inception with adaptation in mind. Concepts move quickly from page to packaging. Titles are conceived as castable, high-concept genre vehicles designed to attract talent at the earliest possible stage, well before traditional literary metrics like sales figures or review coverage come into play.
That model has already demonstrated real pulling power. The producers’ previous films have drawn Jeffrey Wright (Hold the Dark), Martin Freeman (Cargo), Gary Oldman (Tau), and Tom Hardy (Capone) to their projects, with Michelle Yeoh attached to the forthcoming The Surgeon. The pattern is consistent: talent comes to Neotext because the material is built to be performed, not retrofitted for it.
Anonymous Jane fits that template precisely. The novel was conceived with a strong genre voice, clear tonal identity, and adaptation potential woven into its structure. What it lacked was discoverability. The Deadline announcement changes that, surfacing the book within the adaptation conversation. The film is being developed with franchise potential in the studio action space, and casting and co-producing discussions are active.
Alice Waddington and the Creative Vision Behind the Film
Waddington’s track record as a sci-fi and dramatic horror director makes her an arresting choice for this material. Her Academy Awards-qualified short Disco Inferno played at 70 international festivals, including Palm Springs and Sitges. Her debut feature Paradise Hills — a Netflix EU production — screened at 20 international festivals after its Sundance Film Festival premiere and earned an Academy Award qualification. She has since written and directed for Amazon EU’s horror anthology Stories to Keep You Awake and Warner Bros’ Tales from the Woods, developed projects for Netflix and MGM Studios in the United States, and sold a television series to Disney Studios.
Her work is defined by emotionally precise visual worldbuilding and a proven ability to operate across European sensibilities and U.S. studio registers simultaneously. Anonymous Jane fulfills exactly that combination — a project that demands commercial legibility without sacrificing the psychological weight that makes the source material compelling.
“This history signals a company trusted by world-class performers to support ambitious material that balances commercial reach with creative credibility,” Waddington and Silvera stated jointly. “Anonymous Jane is an action romp that tonally sits between Killing Eve and The Nice Guys — and Neotext is exactly the kind of home that makes distinctive, franchise-capable projects like this possible.”
Philip J. Silvera and the Action Language of the Film
Silvera’s involvement signals something specific about what kind of action film Anonymous Jane intends to be. His two decades in stunts and a decade as second-unit director with the Emmy-winning Action Factory produced work that consistently prioritized actor-driven physicality and spatial coherence over visual effects spectacle. His credits include Deadpool I, Marvel’s Daredevil, Halo, and Terminator: Dark Fate.
Silvera treats action as performance rather than coverage. Sequences are designed around the character’s motivations and the logic of the space rather than assembled in post-production. The result is fight choreography with geographic clarity and human weight — the kind that makes an audience feel the consequence of every contact. That sensibility is a direct match for Anonymous Jane, whose protagonist is defined as much by how she moves through danger as by what she knows.
Working in close creative collaboration with Waddington, Silvera will shape the film’s physical language from the ground up. The pairing of her visual worldbuilding with his performance-centered action design positions Anonymous Jane as a genre film with a genuine point of view — one built to stand apart in a crowded field and carry a franchise if given the chance.
Anonymous Jane is available now via Neotext and on Goodreads. The original Deadline Announcement can be read here.
