Bestselling authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, Angeline Boulley, Madeline Miller, Kate Quinn, and Jessica Shattuck all have books currently bound for the screen via television series, streaming, and film.
Weatherman Al Roker’s production company has optioned The Personal Librarian, by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, for what he hopes will become a limited series or film that could find a home, potentially, on a streaming service. The book has personal relevance to Roker. His wife, the ABC News national correspondent, Deborah Roberts, is a fan and played a key role in persuading the authors to work with the production company. Roker and Roberts will work as executive producers on the project.
“From the moment I picked up The Personal Librarian, I fell in love with it. And I knew it needed to make the leap to a series or motion picture,” said Roberts, in a prepared statement.
To read the entire article, click here.
Black Bear Pictures’ television division has optioned the rights to Kate Quinn’s novel The Rose Code and is developing it as a scripted TV series.
The book tells the World War II story of three female codebreakers at Bletchley Park. It is currently number three on the New York Times bestseller list.
To read the entire article, click here.
The Obamas’ Higher Ground acquired author and Ojibwe tribe member Angeline Boulley’s debut novel, Firekeeper’s Daughter, for cinematic adaptation this past February. Mickey Fisher (Reverie, Extant) will adapt the book with Wenonah Wilms, who is also from the Ojibwe tribe.
“Higher Ground Productions were just so in sync with the same core values that I had and the same vision for the project,” Boulley says. “Like, for example, I made it very clear to every potential partner that I spoke with that it was as important for me that there’d be native talent not only in front of the camera but behind the camera, in the writer’s room, and at every stage of production. They were just completely on board all the way and already had ideas about that.”
To read the entire article, click here.
Madeline Miller’s bestseller, Circe, will soon be casting a spell on television audiences. Circe, about the famed Greek goddess and witch, is being adapted as an eight-episode drama series for HBO Max. WarnerMedia’s upcoming streaming platform acquired the rights to the 2018 novel “in a competitive situation” and gave it a straight-to-series order.
Circe is a feminist take on the tales of Greek mythology. The titular character, the daughter of Helios, feels lost and overlooked in her world of gods and nymphs until she discovers her own powers — and embraces her identity as a sorceress. The novel topped the New York Times bestseller list for 16 weeks and won the 2019 Indie Choice Award. It has been translated in 22 languages.
To read the entire article, click here.
Daisy Ridley and Kristin Scott Thomas will co-star in an upcoming film adaptation of Jessica Shattuck’s 2017 historical novel, The Women in the Castle.
Shattuck’s novel is about three women, all widows, in Germany as World War II ends in 1945. One of the women owns the titular castle; her husband was executed for his involvement in the attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler the previous year. She invites two other women connected to that group to stay with her: Benita Fledermann, who survived the Soviet occupation of Berlin, and Ania Grabarek, who escaped Poland with her two children. Kirkus called the novel a “primer about how evil invades then corrupts normal existence.”
To read the entire article, click here.
