Hitting Screens, Week of
Oct. 4, 2016
The Tim Burton adaptation of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children was tops at the box office, this weekend, propelling the book further up Amazon’s sales rankings. Unfortunately, the high expectations for Disney’s Queen of Katwe, were not met in its expanded release, although it did well with critics.
After much drum-rolling, The Girl on the Train finally pulls into theaters this coming Friday. Directed by Tate Taylor (The Help), it stars Emily Blunt, Rebecca Ferguson, Haley Bennett, Justin Theroux, and Luke Evans.
No reviews yet, but the NYT and the WSJ [subscription maybe required] ran features on the film last week. Apparently the film version scared the author, reports NYT, “It’s a shocking film in parts, really frightening … It’s an odd thing, because I actually know what’s happening, but it felt really fresh to me.” Tie-ins were released in August.
James Patterson moves in to the lucrative family movie genre with the adaptation of his Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life.
Directed by Steve Carr (Daddy Day Care), it stars Griffin Gluck, Lauren Graham, Rob Riggle, Retta, and Thomas Barbusca. It opens Oct. 7.
A tie-in came out in August.
The Great Gilly Hopkins. an adaptation of Katherine Paterson’s 1978 National Book Award-winning children’s novel of the same name (it also was a Newbery Honor Award title) also opens this weekend, with a simultaneous release on VOD.
The family film is directed by Stephen Herek (101 Dalmatians) and stars Sophie Nélisse, Julia Stiles, Glenn Close, Kathy Bates, Octavia Spencer, Bill Cobbs, and Billy Magnussen. No tie-in has been released.