The arrival of the holidays coincides with the end-of-the-year cut-off for Oscar qualification. As a result, movie releases shift into a higher gear in the upcoming weeks, beginning with the wide release tonight of the final Hobbit movie, expected to bring in $75 million by Sunday.

But there’s no surer sign of the arrival of a big movie than an SNL sketch:

In fact, this holiday is so crowded that the Weinstein company ended up changing the release date of their big kid’s movie, Paddington, to January 16. Little did they know that one of the major Christmas releases, The Interview, would end up being cancelled by most major theater chains (reminder: 25 years ago, independent bookstores stood up to threats against selling Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses)

Below are the book-related movies scheduled through the end of the year (for all upcoming movies based on books, check our listing. For tie-ins, check our catalog on Edelweiss).

12/19 — Annie

This live action movie is based on the musical, which in turn is based on the Little Orphan Annie comic strips by Harold Gray, it stars the youngest-ever Oscar nominee, Quvenzhané Wallis, as Annie and Jamie Foxx as Will Stacks (a new version of Daddy Warbucks) with Cameron Diaz chewing up the scenery as a conniving Miss Hannigan.  See the trailer here

Scholastic has the tie-ins:

Annie: The Junior Novel (Movie Tie-In), Lexi Ryals

Annie: A True Family (Movie Tie-In), Calliope Glass

12/25  — American Sniper

After an Oscar-qualifying limited release on Christmas Day, this opens across the country on Jan 16. Originally a Steven Spielberg film, Clint Eastwood is the director. It stars Bradley Cooper and  Sienna Miller. Trailer

Jesse Ventura is helping keep the book in the news by suing over its mention of him (it seems the movie doesn’t include that scene).

Tie-in:

American Sniper [Movie Tie-in Edition], Chris Kyle, (HarperCollins/Morrow)

12/25 — Unbroken

With Angelina Jolie as director, this has already received major advance attention (she’s already appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to promote it). Trailer

Tie-in:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2014 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Books & Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.