Martian tie-in

Steve Jobs

Carol Tie-in

Brooklyn tie-in

Room tie-in

45 Years

The Revenant

Spotlight tie-in

Jobs Trade Pbk

Danish Girl Tie-in

TRUMBO tie-in

Big Short Te-in

Do you have your ballots ready for this Sunday’s Oscars?

If not, check out our look at the many book adaptations that are in the running.

Tye Sheridan is now “near the top of young actors to watch,” according to Deadine as a result of being selected by Steven Spielberg for the lead in his adaptation of Ernest Cline’s debut Ready Player One, (RH/Crown; Random House Audio/BOT). Deadline adds, “For Sheridan, it’s the latest in a short career full of landing showy roles.”

It’s been a fairly long search for the lead. According to the Hollywood Reporter “Sheridan’s casting comes after numerous waves of searches dating back to fall 2015. Spielberg read and tested across several continents but was never quite happy. In an unusual situation, the romantic interest [Olivia Cooke] and the villain [Ben Mendelsohn] were picked even as the lead role remained vacant.”

Spielberg is currently at work on Roald Dahl’s The BFG, set to open July 1, and is expected to follow up with Player One.

To date, Sheridan has received the most acclaim for his role in Mud, with Matthew McConaughey. He is featured in the trailer, below (he’s the boy with the longer brown hair). An extended 10minute preview is here.

Sheridan will next appear as Cyclops in the upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse and in the adaptation of The Yellow Birds, also set to be released this year.

Ready Play One was recently bumped from its original fall 2017 slot to March 30, 2018, so it won’t be overpowered by  Star Wars Episode VIII.

Taking another step closer to the small screen, Netflix announces that Tom McCarthy will direct the first two episodes of the series adaptation of Jay Asher’s 2007 YA novel TH1RTEEN R3ASONS WHY, (Penguin/RazorBill; Listening Library; OverDrive Sample). McCarthy directed Spotlight, currently in the running for six Oscars. Bringing an additional level of cachet, Selena Gomez is an executive producer.

About a high school student who commits suicide and leaves behind several tapes, each addressed to one of her classmates, explaining how they contributed to her decision, the novel is a YALSA Best Books of 2008, and  was a NYT best seller  in hardcover for over two years.

The first trailer has just been released for the film adaptation of The Light Between Oceans, based on the long-running best seller by M.L. Stedman (S&S/ Scribner).

The movie’s stars are up for Oscars this weekend for their roles in other movies, Michael Fassbender for   Steve Jobs and Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl.

Light opens on Labor Day weekend, having been held back from release last year, a move was probably made, as Deadline suggests, to save it for next year’s awards season.

Released in trade paperback in 2013, tie-ins will be published in late August:

The Light Between Oceans
M.L. Stedman, 8/30/16
Trade Paperback, (S&S/Scribner)
Mass Market, (S&S/Pocket Books)

One of the few black female film directors working today, Ava DuVernay (Selma) has been chosen to direct a new Disney’s adaptation of the 1963 Newbery Award winner, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (Macmillan/FSG BYR). Breaking the news, Deadline also notes this marks “a big step up in scale for DuVernay, a former publicist who proved her mettle by making Selma.”

L’Engle didn’t think much of a previous Disney adaption of her book. When asked by Newseek if it met her expectations, she replied, “Yes, I expected it to be bad, and it is.”

We can hope L’Engle, who died in 2007, would have had better expectations for this new version.

Beset by a slew of delays, including wildfires on location and the departures of both the director and director of photography over creative differences, the HBO series, Lewis And Clark, based on the book Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose, (S&S, 1996), may be shut down entirely.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, “it’s unclear whether production will ever start up again. Sources say that the series’ props and costumes are being held in storage in Canada, where the first iteration was shot.”

In 1977, the TV series Roots, based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Alex Haley was a sensation, opening the eyes of many white American to the horrors of slavery and encouraging African Americans to research their family histories.

The series has been remade, starring Forest Whitaker, Anna Paquin, Laurence Fishburne, Jonathan Rhys Meyers. In the lead role of Kunte Kinte is the “up-and-coming British actor” Malachi Kirby.

Set to premiere on the History Channel on Memorial Day, May 30, the first trailer was recently released.

Tie-in edition: Roots [miniseries tie-in]: The Saga of an American Family, Alex Haley, (Perseus/Da Capo Press, May 3)

The recent biography, Alex Haley: And the Books That Changed a Nation by Robert J. Norrell was picked by Essence magazine as one of “6 Must-Read Books for Black History Month.”

Kirby is known in the U.K. for his role in the TV series East Enders. He also starred as the younger brother in the 2013 British film Gone Too Far. As we noted in an earlier story, and can’t resist mentioning agin, the trailer, below, includes an eerie foreshadowing of his future role.

Evidently, the following Allegiant trailer, released yesterday, is the final one before the film opens on March 18. Den of Geek gives a rundown of all the trailers to date.

As per the now accepted franchise tradition, the final book in Veronica Roth young adult trilogy is being split into two movies. Director Robert Schwentke is not returning for part 2, however. After directing Insurgent and the Allegiant back to back, he said he needed a break, leaving Lionsgate to scramble for a new director before filming in Atlanta this summer.

Arriving tomorrow is Allegiant Movie Tie-in Edition (Harper/Katherine Tegen Books; HarperCollins Audio) in this hardback edition as well as a paperback version.

A bidding war is on to pick up the Scott Rudin production of Jonathan Franzen’s novel Purity (Macmillan/FSG; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample), reports Variety. Daniel Craig is attached as the male lead Andreas Wolf, a charismatic trader of the world’s secrets à la Julian Assange of WikiLeaks.

Showtime, Netflix, FX, and at least three others are each reportedly interested. Deadline, in a gossipy piece, says Hulu and Amazon are both in as well, but gives the early odds to Showtime.

The adaption is thought to be a 20-episode deal and will be written by both Franzen and the director of the project.

It is early days yet, and, as Variety notes, Rudin tried to get Franzen’s The Corrections on air with HBO but the project failed to move forward after the pilot was shot.

Purity, which is not widely considered Franzen’s best book (signature reviews in both the NYT and NPR were tepid), is timely however, touching on the seismic changes social media and the Internet have wrought.

If you already felt it’s a long wait for Steven Spielberg’s movie adapation of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (PRH/Crown), that wait just got longer.

Originally scheduled for release on Dec. 15 of next year, the date has now been moved to March 30. 2018, bumped by Star Wars Episode VIII.

Cline published a second book in the series, Armada, last July and has signed with Crown to write a third. Title and release date have not yet been announced.

The trade paperback edition of Armada will be released in April, with a new cover (called “kick-ass” by the author).

A couple of months ago, we wondered what had happened to the film adaptation of The Light Between Oceans, based on the long-running best seller by M.L. Stedman (S&S/ Scribner).

We just got our answer. Deadline reports it is scheduled for September 2nd, to take advantage of Labor Day weekend. Deadline suggests it may have been held back to save it for next year’s awards season. Both its stars are already up for Oscars this year, Michael Fassbender for Steve Jobs and Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl.

Tie-ins:

The Light Between Oceans
M.L. Stedman, 8/30/16
Trade Paperback, (S&S/Scribner)
Mass Market, (S&S/Pocket Books)

For other adaptations in the works, check our Upcoming Adaptations list. For tie-ins, Upcoming — Tie-ins

The star of the movie version of Gone Girl, Rosamund Pike is in talks to star in the adaptation of another long-running best seller, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer (Random House, 2008) reports Deadline, which also notes that the movie “has previously attracted a string of high-profile actresses to consider the formidable lead role, including Kate Winslet, Lily James and Rebecca Ferguson.”

In addition, it once had Kenneth Branagh attached to direct, but he has since left the project, replaced by Harry Potter‘s Mike Newell.

Pike is currently filming another adaptation,
this one based on a French historical novel,
HHhH, (Macmillan/Picador, 2012). When it was published here, the NYT Book Review called the debut “a gripping novel that brings us closer to history as it really happened. ” It was also it a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Awards  The movie is expected to be released
this year.

Branagh, who directed last year’s Cinderella, is now set to direct an adaptation of Artemis Fowl, based on the children’s book series by Eoin Colfer.

And Colfer recently completed an Iron Man book for Marvel, which, of course, could be turned into a movie.

That’s not the last link in this adaptation chain. Branagh will star in the final season of Wallander, on PBS Masterpiece Theater, May 8-22. It is based on the character in a series of books by Henning Mankell.

If, like us,  you were watching the Puppy Bowl yesterday (featuring the Kitty Half Time Show), you missed the ads on that OTHER bowl.

No loss. you can do a little Monday morning ad watching, via NPR’s Morning Edition story on “The Best And The Worst Of Super Bowl Ads.”

Presumably not one of the best or one of the worst, the ad for Disney’s Jungle Book, based on the Rudyard Kipling classic, is not included in that story:

Another children’s movie, not based on a book, but with tie-ins, was neither a best or worst:

Tie-ins for both are are listed on our downloadable spreadsheet, Upcoming — Tie-ins.

You can watch ALL the SuperBowl ads here.

Super Bowl ads are super expensive and the smart money takes full advantage of them.

The marketing geniuses at Disney have released a teaser of their ad for The Jungle Book.

The teaser is introduced on People magazine by the movie’s young star, newcomer and native New Yorker Neel Sethi. Part of his interview, below:

The adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s classic debuts in theaters April 15. A full-length trailer was released in September.

Tie-ins (full list of tie-ins to upcoming adaptations here):

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)

It’s amazing to realize that the popular childrens series, Magic Tree House has never been adapted for the screen. Today it was announced that Lionsgate has acquired film rights to all the books.

Work has already begun on the first in the live-action films which will be based on the 29th book in the series, Christmas in Camelot, (Random House BYR) reports Entertainment Weekly. Author Mary Pope Osborne will executive produce along with her husband, Will.