SMALL GREAT THINGS To Screen
Jodi Picoult’s most recent novel, Small Great Things (PRH/Ballantine; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample), is movie-bound with an attention-getting all-star cast.
Deadline Hollywood reports that Viola Davis and Julia Roberts will star and that a producer for La La Land will help shepherd the project.
As we noted at the time it hit shelves, the LibraryReads selection generated media attention. It debuted on the NYT Hardcover Fiction list at #1 and is currently at #8 after 14 weeks.
NPR Weekend Edition Saturday featured the author, opening with a gripping summary:
“Ruth Jefferson, a labor and delivery nurse at a hospital in Connecticut … is barred from tending to a newborn baby by the baby’s parents. Ruth Jefferson is African-American. Brittany and Turk Bauer are white supremacists. But Davis, their baby, goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is on duty, briefly alone in the nursery. Should she disobey the order she’s been given by the hospital or touch the baby to try to save him? And does her slight hesitation doom the newborn boy?”
Picot also appeared on CBS This Morning. Host Gayle King noting that the book is “thought-provoking … interesting … and so timely,”asked Picoult how a “white woman of privilege” writes a book confronting racism.
It is early days yet so there is no word on when filming will begin. The paperback edition comes out in June from PRH/Ballantine.