Cannes is WONDERSTRUCK
Todd Haynes’s adaptation of Brian Selznick’s middle grade novel Wonderstruck (Scholastic, 2011) has been selected to enter the competition at the Cannes Film Festival to be held May 17-28.
Haynes, whose films to date have been for adults, won the Queer Palm at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, for Carol based on Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt. This is Haynes’s first film based on a children’s book.
Starring Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams and Okes Fergley Wonderstruck is produced by Amazon studios. A section of the novel is set in 1927 and features a deaf child, Rose, to be played by newcomer Millicent Simmonds, a 13-year-old deaf actress. Haynes has chosen to film her section as a silent movie, using what Deadline calls “an unprecedented number of deaf actors in roles that would normally go to hearing actors.”
This will be the second Selznick book adapted by a celebrated director, after Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning Hugo, based on The Invention Of Hugo Cabret.
Wonderstruck spent 25 weeks on the NYT Children’s Middle Grade Hardcover best seller list, won the 2012 Schneider Family Book Award and was named an ALA Notable Children’s Book.
No news yet on a release date or a tie-in.