Publishing’s Most-Wanted Adaptations



spilled popcorn

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.

Hollywood’s Calling for the Movie Rights

Since 2005, The Black List has published an annual round-up of the best unproduced screenplays, many of which have gone on to win at the box office and on the awards circuit. Year-round, The Black List also provide professional feedback and critiques for screenwriters, a service they expanded earlier this year to include manuscripts for fiction books. Now, they’ve revealed the first Adaptation List, comprised of the 61 novels that professional editors and agents most want to see adapted for film or television.

I’ve read and enjoyed a bunch of the selections. Here are just a few off-the-dome highlights and how they could be done.

  • Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor reads like a house on fire, would offer fun, chew-up-the-scenery roles for a large cast, and the variety of settings around India, ranging from big cities to small mountain villages, would be super fun to see on screen. This one calls for Apple’s deep pockets and willingness to produce adaptations based on less-well-known titles. I think it would work best as a splashy two-hour film, but it could also work well as a one-season limited series. FX and Hulu did so well with Shōgun, let’s put them in the running, too.
  • The Bee Sting by Paul Murray is the project I want Sharon Horgan to pick up when she’s finished with Bad Sisters. A multi-generational family drama set in Ireland, this would lend itself well to a few seasons of the good old fashioned prestige television treatment. HBO, where you at?
  • We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry is one of the most fun novels I’ve read in the last few years, and it would be an absolute party on screen. You get ’80s fashion and pop culture, a huge and diverse cast of teenage girls, and the reliably entertaining accoutrement of Salem, Massachusetts and its witchy history. Let’s hand this one to the Showtime folks who are running Yellowjackets, call Emilio Estevez to do a cameo as someone’s dad (a notebook with his ’80s dreamboat face on it serves an important purpose in the story), and figure out a crossover-universe event with the Hocus Pocus crew.
  • North Woods by Daniel Mason is singular and inventive, really more of a vibe than anything else. The story, such as it is, chronicles a few centuries in the life of a cabin in the woods of Maine. Fix a camera in one spot, and let’s make this one Robert Zemeckis’s post-Here mulligan. This one goes on the big screen, no question.
  • S.A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears would make a hell of a summer blockbuster. The story follows two older men—one Black, one white—whose sons, gay men who were married to each other, have been murdered. Get Denzel Washington and Billy Bob Thornton, and let’s get into it.

5 Kid-Friendly Books for Young Wicked Fans

Wicked: Part One may be the family blockbuster of the year, but the source material—Gregory Maguire’s Wicked series—is decidedly for grown-up readers. If your kids are champing at the bit for a good read while they hold space for the lyrics of “Defying Gravity,” here are 5 librarian-recommended books for kids who loved the Wicked movie but aren’t quite ready for the books.

The comments section is moderated according to our community guidelines. Please check them out so we can maintain a safe and supportive community of readers!



Source link

About The Author