Hitting Screens, Week of April 18
The Jungle Book continues to earn stellar reviews and is set to open to acclaim this week. Writing for RogerEbert.com, Matt Zoller Seitz sums up the general take:
“I saw the newest Disney version of The Jungle Book in the company of my enthralled 12-year old son, and there were moments when I envied him—but not too many, because the film is so surefooted in its effects, so precise and simple in its characterizations, and so clear about what it’s trying to say about the relationship between humanity and nature, that it made me feel about his age again, too. Maybe younger.”
Entertainment Weekly, Deadline, and USA TODAY all follow suit with The A.V. Club offering a rare dissent.
Today we focus on 3 movies of the adaptations arriving next week with tie-ins and big prospects (there are more, see our Upcoming Books to Movies and TV spreadsheet).
The Night Manager debuts on AMC (imported from the BBC) in a six-part miniseries that had already enjoyed gushing praise, so much so that fans are asking for a second season.
Promoting the the US release, stars Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie both say there will only be the one season.
The TV show is based on The Night Manager (TV Tie-in Edition) by John le Carré (PRH/Ballantine Books) in which a former British solider goes undercover to investigate an arms dealer.
The series begins in the US on April 19. One indicator of its success is that, after its release in the UK, tourist business increased to Mallorca, a major setting of the show.
Hologram for the King have sneaked up on many with even the tie-in edition coming out just a week ahead of the film’s opening.
If you aren’t aware of it, you’re not out of the loop. There hasn’t been a great deal of press coverage yet, even though the trailer got attention and Entertainment Weekly listed it as one of “20 of 2016’s Most Anticipated Book-to-Movie Adaptations.”
The film is directed by Tom Tykwer (Cloud Atlas) and stars Tom Hanks, Ben Whishaw, Tom Skerritt, and Sarita Choudhury. Based on Dave Eggers’s 2012 novel, a finalist for the National Book Award, it tells the story of a washed-out American salesman trying to change his fortunes with a deal out of Saudi Arabia.
The season six premiere of Game of Thrones airs on April 24th, finally putting an end to months of speculation over what is going to happen now that the TV series jumps ahead of George R.R. Martin’s novels. As a result, there is no tie-in for this season, with Martin writing that the next book will “be done when it’s done.”
A new trailer was released this week, prompting the fan site Den of Geek to analyze the many promos to date.