Every once in a while, we like to bring you an update on much-loved books that are wending their way to our screens. Today, we look at five bookish film projects in various stages of production, including two books picked by our staff as their best books of 2012: Gone Girl and The Fault in our Stars.
The Fault in our Stars
Shailene Woodley (The Descendants) will play the lead role of Hazel in upcoming film of John Green’s much-loved YA weepie The Fault of Our Stars, about two teenage cancer patients who fall in love. She reported that she was so keen to be in the movie that she was prepared to play an extra, just to be in it.
She says she fought ‘really, really hard’ to be in it, even writing to author John Green to beg for the part, saying: ‘I’m obsessed with you and your book and I would do anything to be a part of it.’ (He wrote back warmly, but pointed out he wasn’t in charge of casting.)
Laura Dern has just signed on to play Hazel’s mother.
Gone Girl
David Fincher (Fight Club) will direct the film of the water-cooler book of the past year, Gone Girl - about a missing wife, a suspicious husband and elusive truths. Ben Affleck will play husband Nick, while British actress Rosamund Pike has just been announced as Amy, the ‘gone girl’ of the title.
Author Gillian Flynn has written the screenplay for the book and Reese Witherspoon, who bought the film rights for $1.5 million, is producing.
Enders Game
Website Geeks Out has called for a boycott of Enders Game, based on Orson Scott Card’s sci-fi modern classic, because of the author’s stated opposition to gay marriage. The film’s director, Gavin Hood, says that while he is ‘distressed’ by Card’s point of view on gay marriage, he ‘optioned the book, not an author’ and hopes the book will still be appreciated as a work of art.
First published in 1985, the story takes place during a time where aliens are real and have attacked Earth twice - leading the government to breed child geniuses, who they train to be super soldiers.
The stellar cast includes Harrison Ford, Hailee Steinfeld, Abigail Breslin, Asa Butterfield, Viola Davis and Ben Kingsley.
Serena
Ron Rash’s novel about betrayal, empire-building and a marriage forged in ruthlessness, Serena, will be released as a film starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper (who reprise their Silver Linings Playbook partnership) in October. It’s been described as an Appalachian Macbeth. The couple’s successful, ruthless reign in the mountains becomes complicated when Serena discovers her inability to bear children, setting her on a vengeful path against her husband’s illegitimate son.
The book was heaped in critical praise; the New York Times admired its ‘bone-chilling aplomb, linguistic grace and the piercing fatalism of an Appalachian ballad’.
The Knife of Never Letting Go
Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) has signed on to adapt Patrick Ness’s multi-award-winning Chaos Walking trilogy, which Lionsgate hopes will be a teenage dystopian hit to rival The Hunger Games.
