The team at Slate are back with their next book club pick, this time it is the ongoing best seller and basis for the blockbuster movie, The Martian (Mass Market MTI; RH/Broadway; OverDrive Sample) by Andy Weir.

The discussion is wide ranging and at times persnickety as the three participants go back and forth with negative and positive responses.

Katy Waldman, Slate’s words correspondent, was “weirdly riveted” by the process of how astronaut Mark Watney works through the catastrophes involved in being abandoned on Mars, but she summarizes it as “nerd-wish fulfillment fantasy, the next wave of reality shows, like Survivor Mars” and in the end can only recommend it with reservations. However, she recommends the movie wholeheartedly.

Laura Miller, books and culture columnist for Slate, is the most positive on the book, offering some book-discussion worthy ideas, comparing it to several recent novels in which the protagonists work through complex processes to avert disasters, such as Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves.

November’s conversation will address one of the year’s most talked-about literary novels, Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life (RH/Doubleday), currently up for two major awards. It is the favorite among odds makers to win the Booker Prize, to be announced later today. On the National Book Awards longlist, we will learn if it makes the shortlist tomorrow.

The final book in Rick Yancey’s 5th Wave series, The Last Star, is set for publication on May 25, 2016 (Penguin/Putnam YR). The cover was revealed by USA Today.

The film adaptation of the first book in the trilogy, The 5th Wave was featured at New York Comic Con this weekend (tie-ins, in hardcover and trade pbk, Nov. 3).

The movie, starring Chloë Grace Moretz, arrives in theaters on January 15.

After several years in development, with multiple actresses announced for the lead (Natalie Portman — who eventually switched roles to become one of the producers — Emma Stone, Anne Hathaway, Scarlett Johansson, Mia Wasikowska and Rooney Mara), the trailer has been released  for the adaptation of the godmother of the mashup genre, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith (Quirk Books, 2009), starring Lily James (Cinderella, Downton Abbey) as Elizabeth Bennett, Sam Riley as Mr. Darcy and Bella Heathcote as Elizabeth’s sister.

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.

The TV series Shadowhunters will premiere on basic cable channel Freeform (formerly ABC Family) on Jan. 12, 2016, it was announced yesterday at New York Comic Con, along with the release of the first official trailer. It is based on Cassandra Clare’s popular YA series beginning with The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones, (S&S/M.K. McElderry Books, 2007), which was made into a movie in 2013. After it flopped at the box office, the producers changed their plans of creating a film franchise and turned to TV, with a new cast of actors, all of whom are fairly new to the screen.

Tie-ins: see our movie and TV tie-ins.
Web site: Shadowhunterstv.com

The phenomenon comes to an end on Nov. 20, when The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2  hits screens (well, maybe not; still to come is the Hunger Games theme park).

The latest trailer has just been released.

It was inevitable that the movie Everest would renew the controversy surrounding the various accounts of the 1996 fatal climb.

As we wrote earlier, there are several books on the disaster. Jon Krakauer wrote the most successful and well-known version, his blockbuster Into Thin Air. He is a character in the Everest film, played by House of Card’s Michael Kelly and is far from happy about how he is represented, telling the L.A. Times, “It’s total bull, anyone who goes to that movie and wants a fact-based account should read Into Thin Air.”

Krakauer’s book is not the basis for this film (it was adapted as a TV movie in 1997, which he also disliked intensely) and no one connected to the script consulted him. He tells the paper that he considers the film a personal affront from director Kormákur and is particularly unhappy with a scene in which he refuses to help in a rescue attempt, “I never had that conversation … I’m not saying I could have, or would have. What I’m saying is, no one came to my tent and asked.”

Krakauer himself has taken criticism for his account of the events. Objecting to his portrayal in Into Thin Air, one of the Russian guides, Anatoli Boukreev wrote his own version, The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest. He is also a character in the movie, played by Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson.

Krakauer is not one of those authors who is unhappy with every film version of his work. He was so pleased with Sean Penn’s adaptation of another of his bestsellers, Into the Wild, that “When [Sean] showed me the rough cut, I wanted to kiss him, I was so happy.”

After a strong box office at IMAX theaters, Everest slipped when it opened last week in regular theaters. Reviews have not been stellar. The L.A. Times even encouraged viewers to turn to other films instead: “documentaries like Meru and The Summit will take you higher than Everest, world-class visuals and all.”

The NYT says the movie “never seems to get anywhere, taking up space and time without managing to be especially memorable or imposing,” while The Telegraph ventures it is a “pulverising tale of real-life tragedy on the mountain [that] never quite hits the heights.”

It seemed inevitable that Paul McLain’s bestseller Circling the Sun, (RH/Ballantine), with its echoes of Out of Africa, would be a candidate for film treatment. Now, The Hollywood Reporter announces that the book has been optioned.

Says producer Lauren Sanchez, “”She was a pioneer for women,” says Sanchez. “Everyone says Hollywood is looking for female-driven roles and stories — this is one of them.”

The only question: what took them so long?

Based on the memoir by 60 Minutes producer Mary Mapes, Truth And Duty: The Press, The President, And The Privilege Of Power,  the movie Truth tells the story of the news team reporting on allegations that then President George Bush had avoided military service. It was later proved that the story was based on faulty documents. Those involved were fired and CBS News anchor Dan Rather stepped down.

The movie stars Robert Redford as Rather and Cate Blanchett as Mapes. The trailer was just released for the movie that opens in a limited number of theaters on Oct. 16, followed by a wider release.

Rather himself endorsed the movie earlier this month at the Toronto Film Festival.

Tie-in:

Truth : The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power
Mary Mapes

Macmillan/St. Martin’s Griffin
Trade pbk; October 13, 2015

Get ready for another film version of a book about financial shenanigans. Following in the footsteps of  The Wolf of Wall Street  is a  film adaptation of  Michael Lewis’s best seller The Big Short, (Norton, 2011). It was just announced that it will be released on Christmas Day, after opening in a limited number of theaters
on Dec. 11.

Because of the sudden announcement and the timing, Deadline is calling it a “Surprise Oscar Entry” saying  it “adds another film to what is shaping up to be the most competitive year-end movie market in recent memory.”

The trailer for the film that stars Brad Pitt, Steve Carrell, Christian Bale and Ryan Gosling was released today.

More financial skullduggery is on its way, with two TV adaptations of books about Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff.

Recently released was a first look at Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer in HBO’s The Wizard of Lies. Based on the  book of the same title by Diana Henriques (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Griffin; Tantor Audio) with additional material from Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family by Laurie Sandell (Hachette/Little Brown), it is directed by Barry Levinson. It is expected to air in 2016.

ABC recently wrapped production on Madoff a limited series starring Richard Dreyfuss in the title role with Blythe Danner as his wife, Ruth Madoff. It is also expected to debut next year.

The second Maze Runner movie, Scorch Trials, opens this weekend, and is expected to land at #1 at the box office, recouping he losses from the first in the series.

Perhaps capitalizing on the attention, trailers of two other movies based on dystopian novels were released this week, even though the movies themselves won’t appear until next year.

The first official trailer for The 5th Wave, starring Chloë Grace Moretz and Maika Monroe was released for the movie that opens on January 15th. The first in a planned series, it is based on the book by Rick Yancey. Movie tie-ins will be published in both trade paperback and hardcover (Penguin/Putnam Juvenile).

The second book in the series, The Infinite Sea, was published last year.

The third movie in The Divergent Series, Allegiant, starring Shailene Woodley and Theo James arrives on March 16 next year. Of course, this final book is being made in to two movies. Part 2, titled Ascendant is scheduled for release in 2017, around the same time as the third Maze Runner movie, The Death Cure,

Based on the book by Veronica Roth, the movie tie-in will be released in both trade paperback. and hardcover (HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen).

Robert Redford and Jane Fonda are teaming up for an adaptation of Kent Haruf’s final novel Our Souls at Night (RH/Knopf; Random House Audio; OverDrive Sample; May. 2015).

According to Deadline, Redford’s Wildwood Enterprises is putting the deal together and hopes to bring the screenwriting team behind The Fault in Our Stars on board. Redford will produce with Netflix backing the project and planning to stream it as well as making it available to theaters.

Redford and Fonda starred together in Barefoot in the Park in 1967 and The Electric Horseman in 1979.

Haruf’s quiet and bittersweet final novel (he died in 2014) is set in the same small Colorado town as his Plainsong trilogy. It features two 70-year-olds who spend platonic nights together for company and conversation – until the judgments of the town and the displeasure of their families get in the way. Hollywood sees it through their own filter. Deadline reports, “the vision of the movie is similar in spirit to the Clint Eastwood-Meryl Streep-starrer Bridges of Madison County.”

After its heady initial run in 2011, Ernest Cline’s debut Ready Player One, (RH/Crown; Random House Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample) is getting new buzz as it makes its way to movie theaters.

Director Steven Spielberg has found his female lead, Olivia Cooke (Me and Earl and The Dying Girl,  Bates Motel). According to The Hollywood Reporter, she beat out Elle Fanning and Lola Kirke for the role of Art3mis and is currently in negotiations to finalize the deal. THR comments, “The role is major breakthrough for Cooke, a rising talent who’s been working mostly in the indie world,” Meanwhile, the search for a male lead continues.

The story has been picked up by the consumer press and fan sites — Entertainment Weekly, io9, and MTV.

Holds are still strong in many libraries, with some still topping a 3:1 ratio. At other libraries, all copies are in circulation.

Fall movie and tv previews are arriving, along with the book previews (for books, see our coverage here and here).

This is the fall of the return of Star Wars, but a number of other tentpole movies as well as Oscar contenders are based on books, including Everest, Maze Runner: Scorch Trials, The Martian, Steve Jobs and, of course, Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2.

Below are links to some of the major movie previews.

Entertainment Weekly

Rolling Stone

Huffington Post

For a full list of upcoming adaptations, download our Books to Movies and TV spreadsheet. For tie-ins, link to our listing.

The movie adaptation of Bill Bryson’s A Walk In the Woods opens on Wednesday, starring Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, and Emma Thompson.

It is already gaining a following. The New York Times Magazine reports at the beginning of an interview with Bryson that “Park rangers along the Appalachian Trail are preparing for a huge influx of visitors, thanks to the release of A Walk in the Woods.”

Holds, on both the print and audiobook versions of Bryson’s memoir/travel tale, are growing at several libraries across the country as well, indicating that readers might be similarly inspired by the movie.

The NYT interview includes questions about bears, science, and politics, which Bryson answers in his trademark blend of clarity and wit.

We posted a story earlier, when the trailer for the movie was released, with details of the movie-tie in edition.

A Walk in the Woods (Movie Tie-In): Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, Bill Bryson
RH/Broadway, July 28, 2015
Trade Paperback; 9781101905494, 1101905492;  $15.99 USD
Mass Market Pbk; 9781101970881, 110197088X; $7.99 USD

After The Hunger Games and Divergent where do you turn for your next franchise?

Lionsgate’s Summit Entertainment will move from the dystopian future to the historical past, reports Deadline, with a potential trilogy about Julius Caesar, based on Conn Iggulden’s Emperor novels.

The first film, titled Emperor, will be based on The Gates Of Rome and The Field Of Swords (both trade pbk, RH/Delta).

The series consists of five books.

The author recently began a new series about England dynastic wars. The second in the series was published this year, Wars of the Roses: Margaret of Anjou (Penguin/Putnam, 6/16/15).

Along with his brother Hal Iggulden, he also published the surprise best seller, The Dangerous Book for Boys (Collins, 2007). In the fall NBC bought the rights to a series based on the book to be produced by Bryan Cranston.