As a Thanksgiving treat, a new trailer was released for Star Wars.

The Guardian mines the short video for plot clues.

Others are mining even flimsier material. According to NPR News, fans are even analyzing tie-in toys for what they reveal about the movie. The soundtrack is also being examined for spoilers. One enterprising super-fan has pulled all the spoilers together to create an plot outline.

No wonder LucasFilms was so paranoid about spoilers that they forced the publisher to put off the publication date of both the adult and junior novelization until well after the movie’s 12/18/15 release (this only applies to the print versions; the adult ebook isscheduled for release the same date as the movie).

Spoiler-free childrens books are rising on Amazon’s sales rankings, The Star Wars Little Golden Book Library, released in September, is currently at #13 (PRH/Little Golden Book). Each volume in the series retells the previous six Star Wars movies. Much further down in the rankings is the forthcoming  Star Wars: The Force Awakens Visual Dictionary by Pablo Hidalgo (PRH/DK Children, Dec. 18), now at #381.

A rundown of all the books coming at the time of the release of the movie is available and Listening Library provides a list of their audios for Middle Graders.

We’ve added the library-friendly titles (no stickers or light sabers), to our listing of tie-ins to upcoming movies.

To occupy kids and their parents during the Thanksgiving holiday Pixar’s animated movie, The Good Dinosaur opens today. It’s not based on a book, but it comes with a range of tie-ins.

The title cuently rising on Amazon’s sales rankings is the Little Golden Book version, which most libraries do not buy, The Good Dinosaur by Bill Scollon and illustrated by Michaelangelo Rocco (PRH/Disney/Pixar). It is currently at #32, putting it close to best sellers The Martian and The Day the Crayons Came Home.

Penguin Random House also offers a novelization, The Good Dinosaur Junior Novelization (OverDrive Sample), and two beginner readers, The Journey Home by Bill Scollon and Crash, Boom, Roar! by Susan Amerikaner.

DK gets in on the action with The Good Dinosaur: The Essential Guide, filled with images and movie “fun facts.”
 

For adults and kids there is The Art of the Good Dinosaur with text by John Lasseter and Peter Sohn (Chronicle Books).

For our full list of current and upcoming movie and TV tie-ins, link to our tie-ins collection.

Fans of Agatha Christie have a treat heading their way. Variety reports Fox’s long delayed reboot of Murder on the Orient Express finally looks like it is leaving the station.

Kenneth Branagh will play Poirot as well as direct the film. Branagh and Ridley Scott (The Martian) are producers as is Mark Gordon (Saving Private Ryan), while Michael Green, who is working on Blade Runner 2, is writing the screenplay.

Branagh follows in the footsteps of Peter Ustinov and David Suchet, both of whom made the role famous. Branagh is no stranger to on-screen detection himself, proving his skills playing Wallander for PBS.

According to Box Office Mojo, the film currently has a Nov 10, 2017 release date. Eager moviegoers might be watching that date with a weather eye, however. The movie has been in the works for years. As CinemaBlend wrote several months ago, wondering if the movie would ever appear, “there’s been such little movement on the film that most people probably forgot that it was even planned.”

In 2011, HarperCollins became Christie’s global publisher, reports the UK newspaper Independent. We will keep our eye out for a tie-in.

Fans of Jojo Moyes can celebrate. The release date for the film adaptation of her novel Me Before You (Penguin/Pamela Dorman) is being moved –  once again.

This time, however, the film sill arrive in theaters earlier than expected, on March 4 rather than the previously announced June 3.

Deadline reports the change is designed to “hook women, particularly those off from college and high school on spring break.”

Starring Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones) and Sam Claflin (The Hunger Games), it is directed by Thea Sharrock. This will be her first feature film, after directing the BBC miniseries The Hollow Crown and Call The Midwife. Moyes wrote the screenplay.

As we wrote in May, this is the not the first release date adjustment for the film. The June 3 date was major delay from its original Aug. 21, 2015 release date.

According to Deadline, the move puts the film into direct competition with several other anticipated movies, including Tina Fey’s untitled war comedy based on Kim Barker’s memoir The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan (in her review of this “darkly funny” war reporter’s memoir, the NYT‘s Michiko Kakutani presciently called the author a “sort of Tina Fey character, who unexpectedly finds herself addicted to the adrenaline rush of war.”)

A movie-tie in edition of Me Before You is scheduled for Jan. 26, 2016:

Director Todd Haynes’s film Carol, based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel, The Price of Salt, about a Lesbian love affair (more on the novel from the NYT), debuts in limited release this Friday and is expected to generate Oscar nominations for stars Cate Blanchett  and Rooney Mara.

The director turns to different material for his next adaptation, Brian Selznick’s Wonderstruck (Scholastic, 2011). When the project was announced in May, Haynes already had several other projects in the works and it wasn’t clear which he would do next. Today, it was announced that Julianne Moore will star, indicating Wonderstruck may be next on his list.

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.

Selznick’s most recent book,  The Marvels (Scholastic), published in September, has been on the NYT Children’s Middle Grade Hardcover  best seller list for 6 weeks.

CBS Films is adapting James Patterson’s bestselling children’s series Middle School.

Directed by Steve Carr (Paul Blart: Mall Cop), the cast will include Lauren Graham (Parenthood, Gilmore Girls) and Rob Riggle (22 Jump Street, Hotel Transylvania 2).

The series have won the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards and several titles in the series have been selected for ALSC Summer Reading Lists.

The newest title in the set is Middle School: Just My Rotten Luck (Hachette/Little, Brown; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample)

Patterson will serve as an executive producer and is co-financing the film. According to the Hollywood Reporter, it is expected in theaters on October 7, 2016.

The first preview of Miracles from Heaven, a new movie starring Jennifer Garner and Queen Latifah has been just been released

Based on the book Miracles from Heaven: A Little Girl, Her Journey to Heaven, and Her Amazing Story of Healing by Christy Wilson Beam (Hachette; OverDrive Sample), the film is highlighted in a People magazine online spread. It tells the story of a young girl who “survived a 30-ft. fall from a tree and told her parents she had visited heaven – then was inexplicably cured from her terminal digestive disorder.”

The new issue of People magazine, on newsstands this Friday, features the story in full and includes “additional photos from set and more from Jennifer Garner.”

The film’s release date is March 18, 2016. The Sony producing team behind the 2014 movie Heaven Is for Real is also heading this one.

Although the book title sounds like a several  bestsellers, this one did not hit any of the lists and was not reviewed pre-pub. It was written by the girl’s mother, played by Garner in the film, and is her first book.

Two tie-in editions are forthcoming in February.

Miracles from Heaven — Trade pbk. ISBN: 9780316311373
Miracles from Heaven — Mass Mkt. ISBN: 9780316355322

Note: Tie-in cover art is forthcoming

For those who enjoy the skewering of accepted wisdom, like “the book is always better than the movie,” read this:

The Girl on the Train Movie Will Surpass the Mediocre Book

The movie debuts Oct. 16, 2016, so we have a year before we find out if this prediction os accurate.

Described as an “instant classic,” Jeannette Walls’ best selling memoir The Glass Castle,(S&S/Scribner), tells the amazing story of a growing up with dysfunctional, sometimes homeless parents. In 2012, it was set to be adapted as a film starring Jennifer Lawrence.

Plans have changed and now Brie Larson is in talks to star, as is Woody Harrelson, reports Deadline. Larson is currently enjoying Oscar buzz for her star role in another book adaptation, Room (she was interviewed about it on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday).

Glass Castle‘s Director Daniel Cretton has worked with her before, on the well-received movie Short Term 12.

Disney has just premiered the first full trailer for their next Alice movie, Alice Through the Looking Glass scheduled for release in late May 2016.

All the main actors reprise their roles from the first movie, including Mia Wasikowska as Alice, Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, and Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen.

Like the first movie, the sequel departs from Lewis Carroll’s original. According to the plot summary on YouTube:

“Alice Kingsleigh (Wasikowska) has spent the past few years following in her father’s footsteps and sailing the high seas. Upon her return to London, she comes across a magical looking glass and returns to the fantastical realm of Underland  … The Hatter has lost his Muchness, so Mirana (Hathaway) sends Alice on a quest to borrow the Chronosphere, a metallic globe inside the chamber of the Grand Clock which powers all time. Returning to the past, she comes across friends – and enemies – at different points in their lives, and embarks on a perilous race to save the Hatter before time runs out.”

Tim Burton produces the film but does not direct this time, leaving that to James Bobin, known for his work on the recent Muppets movies.

Tie-in editions:

Alice Through the Looking Glass
April 12, 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 9781484729595
$16.99 USD, $17.99 CAD
Described as a “deluxe novelization.”

Alice Through the Looking Glass: A Matter of Time
April 12, 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 9781484729601
$12.99 USD, $13.99 CAD

Described as a “unique illustrated novel” based on the movie.

If you were charmed by Lily James in the trailer for the Weinstein/BBC adaptation of War and Peace, take a look at her in a parody of period dramas, as “Lizzy” Bennet in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

This is the first full trailer. A teaser was released last month.

The movie is scheduled to open on Feb. 5, 2016.

A tie-in is scheduled for December:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Movie Tie-in Edition)
Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith
Quirk Books: December 15, 2015
Trade Paperback; 9781594748899, 1594748896
$14.95 USD, $16.95 CAD

For more books to movies and TV, see our list of upcoming book adaptations, as well as our list of tie-ins.

A just-released trailer gives a taste of the lavish new adaptation of Leo Tolstory War and Peace. The result of the first-ever collaboration between the Weinstein Co. and the BBC, it is set to air on the BBC in early 2016 and some time later on A&E in the U.S. (UPDATE: it is now scheduled to premiere on all three A&E networks on Jan, 18).

After seeing previews at the major TV marketplace Mipcom last month, Deadline called it “one of the most ambitious event series ever made for the BBC” The sic-part series stars a familiar face from Downton Abbey, Lily James who co-stars with Paul Dano and James Norton.  Gillian Anderson, Jim Broadbent, Stephen Rea and Rebecca Front are also in the cast.

Harvey Weinstein has a librarian to thank for discovering the source material. Reports Deadline, “As a child undergoing repeated eye-surgery, [Weinstein]  was left with few entertainment options until aproaching a librarian neighbor who handed him the book. ‘It was so beautiful. It captured the lonliness I was feeling and the exuberance.’ ”

The official novelization of the new Star Wars movie will be pushed back until January.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Disney/Lucasfilms is so determined to prevent spoilers that they have asked their publishing partner Del Rey (PRH) to delay publication of The Force Awakens by Alan Dean Foster (PRH/Del Rey/LucasBooks; Random House Audio/BOT) until January 5, several weeks after the movie hits theaters on Dec. 17.

WSJ quotes a Lucasfilm’s spokeswoman who confirms that the move is “an effort to keep as many surprises as possible for audiences seeing the movie on the big screen.”

The e-book version (9781101965504) will release earlier than the print, on the day the movie opens. According to WSJ, Disney fears that, because of the lead time for publishing a print book, the files could be hacked ahead of the film’s release, but the company doesn’t see that as an issue for e-books.

There are still plenty of books related to the film to keep readers occupied.

Chief among them is Star Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig (PRH/Del Rey/Lucas Books; OverDrive Sample), a bridge book spanning the years between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. Books for the children’s market such as Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens The Weapon of a Jedi: A Luke Skywalker Adventure by Jason Fry (Hachette/Disney Lucasfilm Press; OverDrive Sample) are also not affected by the delay as they too are set between movies and do not encroach on The Force Awakens story line.

Once the movie debuts, more books will arrive, such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens Visual Dictionary by Pablo Hidalgo (PRH/DK; Dec.) and The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens by Phil Szostak (Abrams, Dec).

After that, the floodgates open. The website Outer Places reports that many new titles were announced during last month’s New York Comic Con. Pablo Hidalgo, LucasFilm’s Creative Executive “revealed that fans could expect a host of new Star Wars publishing stories, which would range from e-shorts to Star Wars Insider shorts to full novels…. all part of a huge new wave of Star Wars storytelling, which is scheduled to kick off in Spring of next year.” (See our listing of tie-ins).

As part of this wave Chuck Wendig’s second and third books in the Aftermath trilogy were announced, Aftermath 2: Life Debt (PRH/Del Rey/LucasBooks, 978-1101966938; May 31, 2016) and Aftermath 3: Empire’s End (no bibliographic info. yet).

Also forthcoming is a book by Claudia Gray titled Star Wars: New Republic: Bloodline. PRH/Del Rey/LucasBooks, 978-0345511362; March 29, 2016). According to Outer Places, “whereas Aftermath explores the moments immediately after Return of the Jedi, Gray’s new novel will be set 6 years before Star Wars: The Force Awakens, skipping ahead and hopefully giving some backstory to the characters and worlds that will be core to JJ Abrams upcoming movie.”

Gray’s most recent Star Wars title is Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lost Stars (Hachette/Disney Lucasfilm Press; OverDrive Sample; Sept)

It will not end there. As the WSJ noted in their story, “Del Rey has published more than 150 Star Wars titles, including the first in the series, based on the original 1977 movie.” In a niffty incident of closing a circle, that original novelization says WSJ, was ghostwritten by the author of the new one, Alan Dean Foster, althoughGeorge Lucas was given the credit.

The most recent trailer for The Force Awakens set the Internet ablaze.

Just after the announcement that the film adaptation of The Girl on the Train is set for release a year from now, comes news about two other titles in the genre are taking major steps closer to screens.

Director Adrian Lyne has been selected to head up the film version of The Silent Wife, (Penguin, 2013) with Nicole Kidman starring. Lyne has had experience with stories about relationships gone spectacularly wrong, having directed both Unfaithful and Fatal Attraction.

The debut novel by A.S.A. Harrison, published as an original trade paperback, was a surprise best seller in 2013.

Another domestic thriller, also starring Kidman, this time along with Reese Witherspoon, Big Little Lies (PRH/Putnam, 2013) is in the works as an HBO limited series. It was just announced that Jean-Marc Vallee (Dallas Buyers Club) is in talks to make his TV directorial debut adapting the novel by Liane Moriarty. Deadline calls this “the highest-profile limited series packages to come together for HBO since True Detective.”

Kidman and Witherspoon will produce the series. The pair clearly love the domestic thriller genre. This is the second title by Morality they have acquired, having optioned the rights last year to The Husband’s Secret  (Penguin/Putnam/Einhorn, 2013). In May, they optioned S.J. Watson’s Second Life (Harper, June 2015). Earlier, Kidman starred in the film version of Watson’s debut, Before I Go to Sleep (Harper, 2011).  Witherspoon was a producer for the movie Gone Girl.

Amazingly, neither of them have anything to do with The Girl on the Train.

A release date of Oct. 7, 2016 has been set for the movie adaptation of the runaway best seller, The Girl on the Train, starring Emily Blunt. Also recently announced, Justin Theroux is in talks to play the lead character’s ex-husband after Chris Evans dropped out due to scheduling conflicts.

The movie will be shot in New York, but Emily Blunt will not adopt an American accent for the role. She told the BBC last month that she and director Tate Taylor have decided that she will play the main character the way she was written, as a British woman.