If you had a tough time imagining Kevin Wilson’s quirky novel The Family Fang (HarperCollins/Ecco, 2011) as a movie, the trailer released this week gives hope that the adaptation might actually work.

Early reviews, based on a showing at the Toronto Internation Film Festival, are mostly positive, with an 80% positive rating from critics tracked on Rotten Tomatoes.

A GalleyChat favorite, the book was acquired by Nicole Kidman’s production company, Kidman stars, along with Jason Bateman, who also directs the project.

For those unfamiliar with the book, it has nothing to do with vampires, but with a quirky family of performance artists.

The film was acquired for distribution by Stars Digital. It will be shown in a limited number of  theaters on April 29, followed by a national rollout and simultaneous VOD release on May 6.

A tie-in has not been announced, but the paperback edition carries a “Now major motion picture” sticker,

With its eye on awards season, Disney has set a the release dates for Queen of Katwe, beginning with a limited release on Sept. 23, 2016, expanding to more theaters the next week. IndieWire comments that the “awards-friendly release date suggests that the studio is confident that the Uganda-set drama has strong potential to make its presence felt come awards season.”  Perhaps next year, the Academy Awards will be a bit more diverse.

The film is based on Tim Crothers’s book, The Queen of Katwe: A Story of Life, Chess, and One Extraordinary Girl’s Dream of Becoming a Grandmaster (S&S/Scribner, 2012).

The book itself was based on Crothers’s ESPN The Magazine article which tells the true-life story of Phiona Mutesi who grew up in the slums of Kampala, Uganda to became a chess champion.

The film stars Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave), David Oyelowo (Selma), and newcomer Madina Nalwanga. Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) directs.

Tie-ins (in trade, mass market, and audio) are forthcoming from S&S (currently planned for September). The regular paperback edition is still in print (Scribner, 2013, ISBN 9781451657821).

A trailer has not yet been released, but several documentary shorts have been made about Mutesi. Below is an example:

A new trailer for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, based on the faux Hogwart’s textbook by J.K. Rowling (Scholastic, 2015), aired during the MTV Movie Awards last night, promoting the film scheduled to release on November 18, 2016.

The Today show re-aired it this morning.

It provides much more detail about the setting and mood of the film than did the first trailer as well as  a bit more information on the plot.

The screenplay was written by Rowling and the film stars Eddie Redmayne as magician Newt Scamander, as well as Ezra Miller, Colin Farrell, and Katherine Waterston. It is directed by David Yates, who was responsible for 4 of the 7 original Potter films.

This new movie takes place seventy years prior to Harry Potter’s arrival at Hogwarts. It will come in three parts, the others in the series are planned for release in two-year intervals: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 2 (2018) and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 3 (2020).

No tie-ins have been announced, but Warner Bros has agreements in place with Scholastic to “publish children’s movie tie-in books for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and its sequels, as well as tie-in books based on the original eight Harry Potter films.” and for adult tie-ins with HarperCollins that “will delve into, and behind the scenes of, the richly textured film and its sequels to enhance fans’ enjoyment of the new stories. Books will include details about how the films were made, the process of art and design, interviews with the cast and crew, and interactive formats such as colouring and postcard books.”

The big news of the week for book-to-screen fans is the Sunday airing of Outlander season two on STARZ.

It has already received fairly strong reviews, based on the opening episodes critics were sent. Entertainment Weekly offered the least glowing praise, accompanied by a B grade. Variety and A.V. Club liked it much more, both deeming it important television.

For this week there are two adaptations to watch.

Hunters premieres on Syfy April 11th. The show combines thriller and SF in an alien conspiracy story, where the aliens are terrorists. Nathan Phillips (Snakes on a Plane) and Britne Oldford (American Horror Story: Asylum) star.

The 13-episode series is based on the Whitley Strieber novels. The first in the set, Alien Hunter, came out in a tie-in edition entitled Hunters (Macmillan/Tor Books) in late Feb. The second in the series is Alien Hunter: Underworld and the third, Alien Hunter: The White House, published on April 5th.

The Jungle Book, Disney’s live action/CGI adaptation, hits screens on April 15th. Based on Rudyard Kipling’s beloved story collection, this is Disney’s second take on the story. The animated version came out in 1967 and was the last film Walt worked on.

Reviews are already in and they are strong. Variety says director “Jon Favreau brings a welcome lightness of touch to this visually immersive adventure story … the studio should have a substantial hit on its hands.”

Forbes calls it “a remarkable achievement” and says it is “every bit as visually splendid as you’re hoping it would be.”

The Telegraph says “Favreau’s film is a sincere and full-hearted adaptation that returns to Kipling for fresh inspiration, but also knows which elements of the animation are basically now gospel, and comes up with a respectful reconciliation of the two.”

There are three tie-ins thus far:

The Jungle Book: The Strength of the Wolf is the Pack, Scott Peterson, Joshua Pruett, Zendaya, (Disney Press, March 1).

The Jungle Book: Mowgli’s Rainy Day, (Disney Press, April 8).

The Art of The Jungle Book, Ellen Wolff (Perseus/PGW/Insight Editions, April 15).

The BBC project to adapt Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy as a TV series is getting closer to reality, starting with The Golden Compass.

Salon reports that Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner, the producers behind Dr. Who, and the BAFTA-Award winning screenwriter Jack Thorne, who wrote Skins, The Fades, How I Live Now, and who has been tapped for the film version of The Sandman, are on board.

Saying that the trilogy “sits somewhere between The Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter books, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series, and Paradise Lost,” Salon expects this team of creatives to produce something in line with Dr. Who, a “mix of cheeky, geeky, intense, and obsessive.”

The 2007 film, starring Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman, was widely considered to have cut the meat from the rich story Pullman wrote, and plans for film sequels fizzled. With both producers and writer announced, the full TV series is one more step closer to an actual air date and critics seem more hopeful it will fulfill Pullman’s epic vision.

The first full trailer has just been released for Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1982 children’s book, The BFG, (Macmillan/FSG YR).

Building off the teaser that came out in December, the trailer shows more of giant country, more giants, and some wonderfully enchanting special effects.

The film stars Mark Rylance, who just won an Oscar for his work in Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, as the BFG, and newcomer Ruby Barnhill as Sophie, the girl he whisks away. Penelope Wilton, Rebecca Hall, Bill Hader, Rafe Spall and Jemaine Clement also star.

The trailer has brought media coverage including Wired‘s take timed to key moments and this summary from USA TODAY: “it’s just as magical, just as emotional, and just as terrifying as the book we read when we were little.”

A tie-in comes out in May: The BFG Movie Tie-In, Roald Dahl (Penguin/Pufin Books; May 24, 2016
Paperback; $7.99; Audio tie-in, Listening Library).

The film opens July 1.

As part of his PR efforts, Spielberg is also promoting reading in a post to Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/BFGMovie/videos/vb.309072625927102/565924033575292/?type=2&theater

After years in development, the first trailer for
the movie adaptation of The Lost City of Z (RH/Doubleday;2009; OverDrive Sample) by David Grann has just been released. It stars Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland and Sienna Miller.

No release date has yet been announced, but it is expected to hit screens some time in this fall.

The book (Doubleday, Feb, 2009), grew out of a New Yorker article by David Grann, about British explorer Percy Fawcett, who disappeared in 1935 during an attempt to prove his claim that a highly sophisticated city, which he called the City of Z, was hidden in the Amazon jungle. At the time it was published, the NYT critic Michiko Kakutani gave it a rare rave, “at once a biography, a detective story and a wonderfully vivid piece of travel writing that combines Bruce Chatwinesque powers of observation with a Waugh-like sense of the absurd … it reads with all the pace and excitement of a movie thriller and all the verisimilitude and detail of firsthand reportage.” It topped most of the year’s best books lists.

Grann made Hollywood news recently for his upcoming book Killers Of The Flower Moon: An American Crime And The Birth Of The FBI (PRH/ Doubleday; 4/18/17; 9780385534246) which is currently the subject of a major auction. Grann described the book two years ago in a Reddit AMA:

It’s about the Osage Indians in Oklahoma. In the 1920s they became the richest people in the world after oil was discovered under their reservation. Then they began to be mysteriously murdered off—poisoned, shot, bombed–in one of the most sinister crimes in American history.

The heavily-anticipated debut novel The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney (HarperCollins/Ecco; HarperAudio) fulfills expectations by hitting the number 2 spot on USA Today ‘s best seller list.

It has also landed a movie deal with Amazon Films. Deadline‘s story notes that it will hit the NYT Best Seller list, to be released tomorrow, at #3.

The movie will be produced by Jill Soloway who also produced Amazn’s hit series, Transparent. The author will write the script.

Oscar Isaac has joined the cast of the film adaptation of the Nebula Award-winning novel, Annihilation (Macmillan/FSG; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample), which already includes Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, and Tessa Thompson.

Alex Garland will direct. This project reunites Garland with Isaac, who starred in the director’s Ex Machina. Vanity Fair enthusiastically endorses the project, saying,  it “was already shaping up to be another incredible bit of original, cerebral sci-fi long before Oscar Isaac joined the cast.”

Annihilation tells the story of Area X, an isolated landscape cut off from human occupation which nature has taken back. Previous expeditions to the area have been resulted in tragedy. A new all-female group, each is known not by name, but only by her profession, is set to try again. Natalie Portman plays the biologist, the story’s narrator, and Isaac will play the ghost of her dead husband, who was a member of a previous expedition.

Annihilation is the first book in The Southern Reach trilogy, completed by Authority and Acceptance, The news sent the book rising on Amazon’s sales rankings

The movie is expected to be released in 2017.

Jane Austen fans, feast your eyes on the recently released trailer for the movie Love & Friendship.

Although it is based on an untitled novella published after Austen’s death as Lady Susan (available in several editions, including one from Penguin Classics), the movie uses the title of a different work by Austen, an early short story.

As we wrote earlier, the film is directed by Whit Stillman, described in an interview with Vanity Fair as “The cult director of contemporary and contemporary-ish Austen-inflected fare,” such as Metropolitan and The Last Days of Disco. It stars  Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny, with Xavier Samuel and Stephen Fry and is set for release in theaters on May 13. followed by streaming via Amazon Prime.

The tie-in is written by the director:

Love & Friendship: In Which Jane Austen’s Lady Susan Vernon Is Entirely Vindicated by Whit Stillman, (Hachette/Little, Brown).

The reviews of the screening at the Sundance Film Festival this year were warm, as exemplified by those from Vanity Fair, “Love & Friendship: A Cream Puff of a Movie” and the Guardian, “Kate Beckinsale is a devious delight.”

Just one week after it was published, Harlan Coben’s novel, Fool Me Once, Harlan Coben (PRH/Dutton; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample) is on the way to the big screen with Julia Roberts set to produce, according to Deadline,  and star as a former Army helicopter pilot who discovers something unsettling on her two-year old daughter’s nanny cam, images of her recently mudered husband.

Despite their cinematic qualities, only one of Coben’s novels has been adapted, the 2006 French film, Ne le dis à person (Tell No One). The rights to several others have been acquired, but are still listed as in development.

Last month the release of the teaser trailer for Me Before You caused the novel it’s based on to rise to number one on Amazon’s sales rankings. The extended trailer has just been released, causing both Me Before You and its sequel, After You, to rise again.

The new preview gets extended coverage with Entertainment Weekly counting down the 9 moments of the trailer that made them weep and US Magazine offering a lengthy summary of the 2 minute clip.

Due out June 3, the film stars Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones) and Sam Claflin (Finnick Odair from The Hunger Games) transitioning from worlds of dragons and death matches to life-affirming contemporary romance.

The novel’s author, JoJo Moyes, wrote the screenplay and a movie-tie in edition will be released on April 26: Me Before You: A Novel (Movie Tie-In) by Jojo Moyes (PRH/Penguin Books).

In every library we checked circulation remains very strong with most libraries having a long holds queue yet to be satisfied. Both titles are still on The New York Times Best Sellers list as well. Me Before You tops the Paperback Trade Fiction list and After You is no. 13 on the Hardcover Fiction list.

It is not a happy week for directors, critics, or, it seems, viewers.

The hoped for blockbuster of the week, Batman v Superman, is not faring well. Variety reports that it is “facing a rocky start … with lukewarm reviews and … a bleak Rotten Tomatoes percentage.” Vox simply says it is “a crime against comic book fans.” UPDATE; Hang on! It seems the box office is improving. with Deadline reporting that the movie is “poised to be Warner Bros. best opening of all-time,” causing industry watchers to scratch their heads because,”rarely do we see a panned movie with OK audience reaction open to $100M-plus.”

The biopic about Hank Williams, I Saw the Light, similarly failed to win over critics, with Indiewire calling it “woefully shallow.”

NBC’s new show Heartbeat also had tough time with USA Today slamming it as a “terrible” and a “weak medical soap.”

With that as background the news does not look that good for next week either.

There is only one book adaptation hitting the screens and based on advanced reviews from its debut during the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, it does not seem to be a breakout.

Kill Your Friends opens on April 1 in limited release. It is based on the 2008 debut novel by John Niven, also titled Kill Your Friends (HC/Harper Perennial) and follows the life of a music insider as he does anything to further his bottom line during the heyday of the late 1990s.

It stars Ed Skrein, Nicholas Hoult, Rosanna Arquette and is directed by Owen Harris (The Gamechangers). According to The Hollywood Reporter, Niven wrote the screenplay himself.

It got panned last year upon its initial airing with The Guardian commenting, “TV director Owen Harris has stuffed his maniacally energetic film with so many attempts to shock that it ultimately grows dull and tiresome” Variety chimed in with the same general take, calling it an “initially sharp, increasingly tiresome and violent satire.”

No tie-in edition is being released.

An adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods (HarperCollins/Morrow; a tenth anniversary edition is coming in August) has been inching towards the screen for five years and is now set to begin shooting next month, with expectations that the series will debut next year on the Starz network.

In the lead-up to production, a string of casting announcements have been released, including the leads, Emily Browning as Laura Moon and Ian McShane as Mr. Wednesday.

Meanwhile, some other Gaiman adaptations are in limbo. A film version of the Sandman graphic novel series (Vertigo) was set to be directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt who would also star, but he recently left the project, over “creative differences.”

In 2013, it was announced that Ron Howard was in talks to direct The Graveyard Book and that Joe Wright was set to direct an adaptation of Gaiman’s adult novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane, but there has been no news on either since.

Gaiman is publishing a collection of nonfiction in May, The View from the Cheap Seats (HarperCollins/Morrow). According to the publisher, “the title piece, at turns touching and self-deprecating … recounts the author’s experiences at the 2010 Academy Awards in Hollywood,” when the adaptation of his childrens novel Coraline was nominated for Best Animated Feature.

Coming in June is a graphic novel version of Gaiman’s short story, How to Talk to Girls at Parties (Dark Horse).

A film version began shooting in December starring Elle Fanning, Nicole Kidman, and Alex Sharp. Expected for release in the UK this year, no US release date has yet been announced.

The film adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Live By Night, directed by Ben Affleck, has been set for release on Oct. 20, 2017. Affleck also stars, along with Sienna Miller, Zoe Saldana and Chris Messina. Deadline calls the date a “prime fall spot.

This is Affleck’s fourth time directing. His first effort as a director was also an adaptation of a Lehane novel, 2007’s Gone Baby Gone.

Live by Night (Harper/ Morrow) is a crime novel set in the Prohibition era about the rise of an Irish-American gangster. Prophetically, when it came out, Entertainment Weekly, called it a “ripping, movie-ready yarn that jumps from a Boston prison to Tampa speakeasies to a Cuban tobacco farm.

Lehane is no stranger to Hollywood. In addition to Gone Baby Gone, films have been made of his novels Mystic River (2003) and Shutter Island (2010). He has also written for the TV series The Wire and Boardwalk Empire.

Affleck appears in theaters this week as Batman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice