Anna Paquin is joining the cast of the Netflix series adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace (PRH/Anchor; OverDrive Sample), reports IndieWire.

The actress, best known for her roles in X-Men and HBO’s True Blood, is set for the role of Nancy Montgomery, one of the two people allegedly killed by Grace Marks in the 1800s.

As we wrote previously, the double murder rocked Canada in the 1840’s with the public avidly following every detail and debating the question of whether the poor young Irish immigrant Marks (to be played by Sarah Gadon) was guilty of killing her employer and his housekeeper/lover (Montgomery).

Mary Harron (American Psycho) is directing the six-hour series. Filming started this month. No word yet on an airdate.

This is not the only new Atwood adaption on the way. As we noted earlier, Hulu is adapting The Handmaid’s Tale.

Todd Haynes’s adaptation of Brian Selznick’s middle grade novel  Wonderstruck (Scholastic, 2011) is moving closer to the screen with filming recently concluded, reports Movie Pilot.

Starring Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, Okes Fergley (Pete’s Dragon), the film also features newcomer Millicent Simmonds, a 13-year-old deaf actress in the role of Rose, who is also deaf.

Selznick is known for his brilliant imagery and creative storytelling and it seems Haynes will bring an equally inventive approach to the story, electing to film sections as a silent movie, matching not only the era in which part of the novel is set, but also the deaf Rose’s silent world. Deadline notes that “this section of the narrative will see an unprecedented number of deaf actors in roles that would normally go to hearing actors.”

The film, produced by Amazon studios,  is expected for release sometime next year.

As we noted previously, this will be Selznick’s second book adapted by a celebrated director, after Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning Hugo, based on The Invention Of Hugo Cabret.

Ted Chiang has won a remarkable number of major science fiction awards. That is even more remarkable when you realize that his output has been relatively small, just 15 short stories, most of them originally published in magazines. A collected edition of some of his short stories, Stories Of Your Life And Others (originally published in 2002 by Macmillan/Tor; re-released by PRH/Vintage in 2016; OverDrive Sample), is called by the publisher “the most awarded collection in history” even though, technically, it’s not the collection that was awarded, but the stories in it.

In a recent interview in Electric Literature, Chiang’s work is described as managing to “capture the human drama behind philosophical questions, in clear and spare prose that seduces with its simplicity.”

That doesn’t sound like the type of science fiction that generally makes it to the big screen (in an interview last year, he dismissed movies like Star Wars as “adventure stories dressed up with lasers.”)

Nevertheless, a $50 million dollar adaptation of the title story from the collection,  Story of Your Life is headed to screens this fall, with the title Arrival.

Chiang says that, after he first got the idea to write about a woman trying to communicate with aliens and having her own life profoundly changed as a result, he studied linguistics for four years as preparation.

Directed by Denis Villeneuve, starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker, the movie will arrive in theaters on November 11. The first trailer was just released.

Tie-in:
Arrival (Stories of Your Life MTI)
Ted Chiang
PRH/Vintage: October 25, 2016

The publication of Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race (HarperCollins/Morrow; HarperLuxe, Sept. 6) by Margot Lee Shetterly is heralded by not just a book trailer, but a full-fledged movie trailer for a major release, coming in January. As a result, the book jumped up Amazon’s sales rankings.

One of our GalleyChat titles for July, it was signed up back in 2015. Director Theodore Melfi (St. Vincent) was so taken with the script that he dropped out of the running to direct a Spiderman movie in favor of this one.

It stars Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe as a group of African American women who worked at NASA in Langley, Virginia on the mission that sent John Glenn into space in 1962. Also in the cast are Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Mahershala Ali, Aldis Hodge and Glen Powell.

The book will be released in paperback in December. Two young readers editions, for ages 8 to 12,  are also scheduled, in hardcover and paperback.

Earlier this year, another book on a different group of women in the space program was released, Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars, Nathalia Holt (Hachette/Little, Brown; OverDrive Sample). Also called ‘human computers” like the women in Langley, they worked in the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California in the 1960’s. One of them, Janez Lawson, was African American.

A trailer has been released for the movie adaptation of Katherine Paterson’s middle grade novel, The Great Gilly Hopkins.

The star of The Book Thief, Sophie Nelisse plays the title role, along with Glenn Close, Kathy Bates and Octavia Spencer. It is scheduled for release on October 7th.

The book was a Newbery Honor winner in 1979, the year after Paterson won the Newbery Medal for Bridge to Terabithia.(also made into a film, which Variety notes, grossed more than $200 million worldwide). In 1981, she won the Newbery again for Jacob I Have Loved.

A new edition (second right, above) was released in hardcover and  paperback in January, featuring a burst that reads “Read it Before You See It,”

One of the new movies opening this week is a blast from the past, Ben-Hur.

NY Magazine writes that the book it is based on “was a best seller on release, surpassing Uncle Tom’s Cabin as the most-purchased American book in history, and holding that record for an astounding 56 years (Gone With the Wind unseated it).”

Forbes reviews the re-make, saying “the pitch here is basically 300: Rise of an Empire … with cheaper looking costumes, the same CGI and editing, and Morgan Freeman, whose performance as God in Bruce Almighty and as a divine narrator in so many other things helps subtly sell the godly aspect.”

The biblical epic is executive produced by Roma Downey (Touched by an Angel) and husband Mark Burnett (Shark Tank, The Apprentice). It stars Jack Huston and Morgan Freeman and opens Aug. 19.

There is a tie-in: Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, Carol Wallace (Tyndale House; also in trade paperback and in Spanish).

War Dogs opens on August 19 and stars Miles Teller, Jonah Hill, Bradley Cooper, Ana de Armas and J. B. Blanc.

As we wrote earlier, it is based on a nonfiction account originally titled Arms and the Dudes. It tells the unlikely story about winning a $300 million US government contract to supply weapons for the war in Afghanistan.

A tie-in came out in late July: War Dogs: The True Story of How Three Stoners From Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History, Guy Lawson (S&S; OverDrive Sample; also in mass market).

Also heading to theaters is Kubo and the Two Strings by Oregon’s stop-motion animation house Laika (the operation behind Coraline and The Boxtrolls).

As we wrote when the preview lit up the Internet, the the fantasy-adventure is set in Japan and features the voices of Charlize Theron, Matthew McConaughey, George Takei and Art Parkinson (Game of Thrones). It debuts in theaters on 8/19/16.

There are multiple tie-ins:

Kubo and the Two Strings: Meet Kubo, R. R. Busse (Hachette/Little, Brown YR; pbk.; Passport to Reading, Level 2, Ages 4 to 8).

Kubo and the Two Strings: The Junior Novel, Sadie Chesterfield (Hachette/Little, Brown YR.; pbk.; Ages 4 to 8).

The Art of Kubo and the Two Strings, Emily Haynes, Travis Knight (Chronicle).

Opening in limited release is A Tale of Love and Darkness, Natalie Portman’s directorial debut (she acts in the film as well). It is based on the memoir of the same name by Israeli author Amos Oz.

Variety calls the film “well-meaning but dreary,” but Esquire headlines it as “the Most Revolutionary Jewish Movie Since Schindler’s List” and goes on to say it “is urgently relevant and unlike anything else.”

There is no tie-in but the book is available in paperback: A Tale of Love and Darkness, Amos Oz, translated by Nicholas de Lange (HMH/Mariner Books).

It might not be the gold medal that Michael Phelps and the American women gymnastics earned last night, but the next Dan Brown film adaptation, Inferno, won its own Olympic competition. On the strength of a trailer played between high profile events, the novel jumped on Amazon, rising from #384 to #6.

Inferno (PRH/Anchor; trade pbk. ISBN 9780804172264; May 6, 2014; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample) spent five straight weeks at #1 on the NYT hardcover bestseller list , and an additional 13 weeks in the top five.

It’s the fourth of the Robert Langdon novels but the third film adaptation, after The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons. The third novel, The Lost Symbol, was attempted, but was abandoned after the screenplay proved difficult, running through three screenwriters.

Ron Howard again directs, with Tom Hanks starring as Langdon, a Harvard symbologist who cannot seem to stay out of trouble. Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything, Rogue One), Irrfan Khan (Life of Pi), Omar Sy (The Intouchables), and Ben Foster (Lone Survivor) also join the cast. David Koepp (Indiana Jones/Crystal Skull, Angels & Demons, Jurassic Park) wrote the screenplay.

Entertainment Weekly provides a concise summary of the action, saying Langdon “attempts to untangle a deadly mystery rooted in history, and this time, he finds himself swept up in a murderous conspiracy and plague tied to Dante Alighieri’s Inferno and the nine circles of hell.”

The first movie was a blockbuster.  Angels and Demons followed three years later. Although deemed a success, it did not do as well as its predecessor. Collider points out that the seven-year gap between the last film and the new one raises the question of whether “the audience remains all this time later.” If the book’s movement on Amazon’s rankings is an indicator, the answer to that question is yes.

The movie premieres on October 28, 2016 in the US with an international start date of October 12th.

As we pointed out when the first trailer appeared, several tie-ins arrive in September:

Inferno (Movie Tie-in Edition)
Dan Brown
Trade Paperback, (PRH/Anchor)
Mass Market, (PRH/Anchor)
Audio CD (PRH/Random House Audio)
Inferno (Movie Tie-in edition en Espanyol), (PRH/ Vintage Espanyol)

In spite of some pretty damning reviews. the comics-based movie, Suicide Squad had what Deadline characterizes as a “huge” opening this weekend. They credit that success in part to the diverse cast of Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Jared Leto and Viola Davis.

Opening this week is Pete’s Dragon, the next in the Disney run of remakes of their earlier successes (Jungle Book, Cinderella), creating a new story from the 1977 original. Debuting Aug. 12, it stars Bryce Dallas Howard, Oakes Fegley, Wes Bentley, Karl Urban, Oona Laurence, and Robert Redford.

IndieWire calls it “a warm, wistful, and wholly wonderful remake.” Variety says it is one “of the year’s most delightful moviegoing surprises, a quality family film that rewards young people’s imaginations and reminds us of a time when the term ‘Disney movie; meant something: namely, wholesome entertainment that inspired confidence in parents and reinforced solid American values.”

The Hollywood Reporter disagrees, calling it “dismayingly dull,” while The Guardian says it “is part ET, part Jungle Book, part Peanuts. It’s sweet and soulful and Spielberg-ish, but with a bitter streak.”

As we wrote earlier there are tie-ins, including a novelization, Pete’s Dragon Junior Novel: With 8 Pages of Photos From The Movie!, Disney Book Group (Hachette/Disney Press). Also available is another middle-grade novel,  Pete’s Dragon: The Lost Years, Elizabeth Rudnick with illustrations by Nicholas Kole (Hachette/Disney Press) and a picture book featured in the film  Pete’s Dragon: Elliot Gets Lost by David Lowery and Toby Halbrooks, illustrated by Benjamin Lowery (Hachette/Disney Press),

A very different film premieres as well, the Mel Gibson vehicle Blood Father, a “rescue-and-revenge thriller,” as Variety calls it, featuring Gibson as a very, very down-on-his-luck father who takes on all comers to save his daughter. It is based on the 2005 book of the same name by Peter Craig (no tie-in has been released).

The Guardian, calls the film “a muscular and deliriously entertaining B-movie that is sure to play like gangbusters with genre aficionados,” continuing “As comeback projects go, Blood Father is stellar. It’s a wonder Quentin Tarantino, the king of career resurrection, didn’t get to Gibson first.”

Variety agrees, saying it is a “a perfect platform to launch the comeback of Mel Gibson … a way to remind people that Gibson, if given the chance, could juice up a serious movie.” About the film itself, they call it “a grimy little pulp action thriller … a scuzzy-bloody B-movie … way down on the totem pole of respectability.”

Indiewire was less impressed saying “Gibson now solidifies his new stature as a B-movie star, fated to anchor discardable material readymade for the bottom-of-the-barrel VOD treatment.”

On the small screen comes Chesapeake Shores, the Hallmark Channel adaptation of Sherryl Woods’s ten-book series of the same name. The first episodes follow events from The Inn at Eagle Point, Sherryl Woods (HC/MIRA; OverDrive Sample).

As Deadline describes the story, “It centers on the O’Brien clan—a large Irish-American family living on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay in a town designed and founded by three O’Brien brothers. The television series focuses on the drama that ensues when the O’Brien family reunites after years apart to face the memories from their past and learn the importance of reconciliation.” It debuts on August 14 and stars Meghan Ory, Jesse Metcalfe, and Diane Ladd.

Several sneak peeks are available on Hallmark’s show site.

On the heels of the announcement that Ottessa Moshfegh’s literary thriller Eileen (PRH/Penguin) is a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, comes the news that screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson has been hired to adapt the novel for producer Scott Rudin.

The Hollywood Reporter writes that Wilson has “become a go-to writer for adapting book-to-screen thrillers with provocative female heroines who are not always likable” ( the WSJ profiled her last year under the headline “Hollywood’s Go-To Scribe for Thrillers“). Having written the screenplay for The Girl on the Train, she was hired last year to adapt Maestra by L.S. Hilton (PRH/Putnam; BOT), another title that was sometimes compared to The Girl on the Train (Note: the cover for the latter, above, is the newly-released art for the tie-in).

Maestra is still in development. No stars or director have yet been named.

The two films opening this week could not be more different. One is a beloved, gentle children’s tale and the other is the other is the next DC comic-based film extravaganza.

The Little Prince, after a long stretch of turbulence, is finally landing safely on the small screen.

As we wrote earlier, Paramount decided not to distribute the film on the eve of its March 18th release date, quickly followed by the news that Netflix would provide landing space.

The animated film will now premiere on Aug. 5, both on the streaming service and in some theaters. Below is the newly cut Netflix trailer:

The film features the voices of Jeff Bridges, Mackenzie Foy, Rachel McAdams, James Franco, Marion Cotillard, Benicio del Toro, Paul Giamatti, Paul Rudd, Budd Cort, Ricky Gervais, and Albert Brooks.
It is directed by Mark Osborn (Kung Fu Panda).

Tie-ins come out months ago:

The Little Prince Read-Aloud Storybook: Abridged Original Text, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (HMH BYR, 11/17/15)

The Little Prince Family Storybook: Unabridged Original Text, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (HMH BYR, 11/17/15).

HMH released a new translation of the original book in hardcover in October as well as several Little Prince board books. Published last year, The Pilot and the Little Prince: The Life of Antione de Saint-Exupery, written and illustrated by Peter Sis (Macmillan/FSG/Frances Foster), was on several best children’s books lists, including the New York Times 10 Best Illustrated.

Suicide Squad smashes onto the big screen on the 5th as well. As we noted in an earlier Titles to Know post, the film follows the action a super villain strike team who serve as covert agents on specialized black op missions.

It boasts a large ensemble cast including Will Smith, Jared Leto, Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnaman, Viola Davis, Jai Courtney, Jay Hernandez, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Ike Barinholtz, Scott Eastwood, and Cara Delevingne.

The movie was featured on the cover of the July 15 issue of Entertainment Weekly and more recently dominated Comic-Con, “winning” the online buzz sweepstakes reports Screenrant and Variety (Game of Thrones did the best for small screen hits).

Collected editions:

Suicide Squad Vol. 4: The Janus Directive, John Ostrander (PRH/DC Comics) is the next collected edition.

Three other were released earlier:

Vol 1: Trial by Fire (Sept. 2015 — 9781401258313)

Vol. 2: The Nightshade Odyssey (Dec, 2015– 9781401258337)

Vol. 3: Rouges (April, 2016 — 9781401260910)

The first star has been announced for the forthcoming Disney adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s 1963 Newbery Award winning novel A Wrinkle in Time  and it’s a big one.

Variety reports Oprah Winfrey will play Mrs. Which, one of the three celestial guides who helps the Murry children and Calvin O’Keefe on their quest through time and space to find the Murry’s missing father.

As we noted earlier, Ava DuVernay (Selma) will direct. Jennifer Lee (Frozen) will write the adaptation.

Oprah worked with DuVernay on Selma and is currently working with her on the forthcoming OWN series Queen Sugar, set to begin on September 6th.

IndieWire reports that DuVernay plans a diverse cast for L’Engle’s novel and Variety notes that Oprah was always going to be one of the three Mrs. W characters (the others are Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Who).

The novel got a bit of a boost last night when Chelsea Clinton mentioned it as she introduced her mother during the Democratic National Convention. She also name checked Chugga-Chugga Choo-Choo by Kevin Lewis – both are rising on Amazon.

Movie fan sites are reacting to the latest trailer for Kubo and the Two Strings by Oregon’s stop-motion animation house Laika as  “the studio’s most epic and visually stunning project yet.”

That’s a lot to live up to for the studio that produced Coraline (based on the book by Neil Gaiman,  ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls (based on Alan Snow’s Here Be Monsters!).

Set in Japan, the fantasy-adventure features the voices of  Charlize Theron, Matthew McConaughey, George Takei and Art Parkinson (Game of Thrones). It debuts in theaters on 8/19/16.

The week before the movie’s release, Universal Studios Hollywood will showcase the studio in a display titled  “From Coraline to Kubo: A Magical LAIKA Experience.”

Tie-ins are available for Kubo.

Kubo and the Two Strings: Meet Kubo, R. R. Busse
Hachette/ Little, Brown YR. Paperback, July 19, 2016
Passport to Reading, Level 2, Ages 4 to 8

Kubo and the Two Strings: The Junior Novel, Sadie Chesterfield,
Hachette/ Little, Brown YR. Paperback, July 19, 2016
Ages 4 to 8

The Art of Kubo and the Two Strings, Emily Haynes, Travis Knight,
Chronicle Books, Hardcover, July 19, 2016

Lauren Oliver’s best selling 2010 YA novel Before I Fall has been adapted as a film that now has a release date of April 7, next year, reports Deadline. Told by a girl who has everything, but then dies in a car accident and gets to relive the last day of her life seven times, it stars Zoey Deutch, Halston Sage and Jennifer Beals.

A tie-in paperback is set to be published on December 6, 2016 (HarperCollins).

Also opening that weekend is the film adaptation of R.J. Palacio best selling middle grade title, Wonder. In the lead role is Jacob Tremblay, who starred in the Oscar-winning adaptation, Room. Julia Roberts plays his mother.

The double issue of Entertainment Weekly currently on newsstands, features the movie adaptation of Stephen King’s series, The Dark Tower, starring  Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba, scheduled to arrive in theaters February 17 next year.

The online site has just released a complete rundown of their stories from the last two weeks, including, “What the film changes (and keeps) from Stephen King’s books,”

The series is being re-released in mass market paperback in December in anticipation of the film’s release (see our list of tie-ins to upcoming movies).

Another Stephen King project, The Mist, Spike TV’s 10-episode series based on King;s novella, has begun production, No release date or tie-in has been announced.

There were plenty of famous characters at Comic-Con this weekend, from Gal Gadot the latest actress to play Wonder Woman, to various cosplay incarnations. But a handful of people got to pose questions, via satellite, to the real Edward Snowden, at the end of a private screening of Oliver Stone’s upcoming movie, Snowden. In the movie, he is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. According to reports, the actor bears an uncanny resemblance in voice and mannerisms to the real person he portrays.

Stone, who has never appeared at Comic-Con before, injected a rare note of seriousness into the weekend, speaking during a separate Snowden panel about privacy. He also addressed the hot new game Pokemon Go, warning that it represents a “new level if invasion” into privacy, and that it is part of “survellience capitalism” that will lead totalitarianism (that discussion comes at the end of the panel, beginning at time stamp 41:03 in the video below).

A new trailer for the movie was also released.

Stone’s movie is partially based on Luke Harding’s The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man, to be released as a movie tie-in next month (PRH/Vintage).

Another film about Snowden, titled Citizenfour, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2015.