In the on-going battle between the big screen and the small screen, Netflix made a splash by buying the rights to a major new movie, directed by Cary Fugunaka and starring Idris Elba. Beasts of No Nation. It is based on the 2005 novel by  Uzodinma Iweala about child soldiers in West Africa.

There’s one problem. To be eligible for Oscar consideration, the movie has to open in theaters. While many theaters refuse to book movies that will be released simultaneously on cable, Netflix has managed to make a deal with Landmark Theatres to premier the movie in 19 cities on the same day it begins streaming on Netflix, October 16.

The first trailer was just released:

Tie-in:

Beasts of No Nation Movie Tie-in 
Uzodinma Iweala
Harper Perennial: September 29, 2015,

The author won New York Public Library’s 2006 Young Lions Fiction Award. The book won  praise from a wide range of publications, including the NYT Book Review

Director Fugunaka was scheduled to direct Stephen King’s It, but dropped out weeks before production. Next up for him is a TV adaptation of Caleb Carr’s The Alienist for TNT. The author recently joined as producer.

Following the success of Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, Hollywood is mad for military movies based on books. Underscoring that, a film based on 13 Hours: The Inside Account Of What Really Happened In Benghazi by Mitchell Zuckoff (Hachette/Twelve,2014) opens on January 15, 2016, the same weekend that its predecessor opened last year.

Retitled 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, it is directed by Michael Bay and stars John Krasinski and James Badge Dale,

The release of the trailer was enough to send the book moving up Amazon’s sales rankings (currently at #88).

Tie-ins:

13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi
MItchell Zuckoff
Hachette/Twelve: November 24, 2015
Trade Paperback
Mass market

Those who have read Emma Donoghue’s claustrophobic best seller, Room  (Hachette/Little,Brown) may have trouble imaging a movie version. Director Lenny Abrahamson took it on, with Brie Larson starring. Just released is a teaser trailer that Entertainment Weekly calls “chilling,” Wired calls “heart-crushing” and E says may be “the year’s creepiest.”

Starring Brie Larson (recently seen in a quite different movie, Trainwreck Amy Schumer), it opens 10/16/15

Tie-ins:

Room : A Novel
Emma Donoghue
Trade Pbk.
Hachette/Back Bay: September 8, 2015
Mass Market
Audio CD

The movie adaptation of David Lipsky’s Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace, (RH/Broadway Books, 2010), titled The End of the Tour,  opens tomorrow.

The book and the movie are based on interviews with the normallly press-averse David Foster Wallace (Jason Segal in the movie) by Rolling Stone journalist Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) conducted when Wallace toured for his novel Infinite Jest. (Hachette/Little, Brown, 1996).

As a result, Wallace’s book, not Lipsky’s, is rising on Amazon sales rankings.

Released on Friday, the first full trailer for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 is getting heavy scrutiny. In case you miss any significant bits, Entertainment Weekly does a “deep dive” into  all 2 minutes and 24 seconds.

The movie arrives in theaters on Nov. 20

Just after hearing librarians rave about the forthcoming Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy (HarperCollins/ Balzer + Bray, Sept. 15) during yesterday’s YA GalleyChat, comes the news that Disney is developing it as a movie.

DRCs are available on Edelweiss, where it’s already gotten “much love” from  47 peers, including 16 librarians.

Check out the full chat below:

As we previewed in March, the Star Wars books are coming, spinning off from the new movie, Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens, premiering on Dec. 18^th.

One of the titles we highlighted, Star Wars: Aftermath (RH/Del Rey/Lucas Books; Random House Audio, 9/15/15) by Chuck Wendig, is now excerpted on the Entertainment Weekly web site.

As Robin Nesbit, Columbus Metro Library, said when presenting the book at BEA’s Librarian Shout ’n’ Share program, libraries that don’t buy the  Star Wars books are missing some powerful “silent circulators,” adding that this one is by one of the series’ best authors.

Wendig has his own fans as well. His next book Blackbirds  (S&S/Saga Press; OverDrive Sample) comes out on the heels of Aftermath. A supernatural thriller about a woman who knows how people will die the moment she touches them, it is in development as a TNT TV series, with production expected to begin in October.

With the final Hunger Games film arriving in November, there’s strong interest in what star Jennifer Lawrence will turn to next. Announced today, she has signed to play the lead in the film adaptation of The Rosie Project (S&S), the debut novel by Australian Graeme Simsion that became a best seller here in 2013.

Don’t hold your breath. The star, who will seen this Christmas as the star of the movie Joy directed by David O. Russell (not based on a book), has a few other projects in the works. She is currently filming Marvel’s superhero movie X-Men: Apocalypse. She is also set for Passenger, a Sony sci-fi love story from an original script which also stars Chris Pratt and is listed for release in 2016. She has signed to star as war photographer Lynsey Addario in It’s What I Do, based on Addario’s memoir (Penguin Press, 2015) a Warner Bros. movie to be directed by Steven Spielberg (who also has several projects in the works, so who knows when his schedule will mesh with hers).

In May of this year, The Hollywood Reporter said she was still planning to produce two movies;

The Rules of Inheritance based on the book by Claire Bidwell Smith (Penguin Group, 2012)

The Glass Castle based on the memoir by Jeannette Walls (S&S/Scribner, 2005)

Earlier, it was announced that she would star in director Gary Ross’s new film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden for Universal.  According to IMDb, that project is still in the works.

Movie scheduling can be challenging. No wonder, as The Hollywood Reporter puts it, “The [Rosie] project is now on a fast-track search for a director,” because “Sony is clearly intent on staying in the business of Lawrence” and wants to be in front of the other studios with claims on her.

Coming October 16, Goosebumps, the movie, in 3-D, of course.

It’s less an adaptation of the Goosebumps books and more a movie in which they are referenced. Jack Black plays R.L. Stine, the books’ creator, who keeps the ghosts and monsters from each book locked in the manuscripts stored in his library. A kid new to the neighborhood discovers them and before you can say “Don’t open them, Pandora,” sets them loose.

The tie-ins, coming from Scholastic, are based on the movie (see our listing of  Upcoming — Tie-ins).

The first trailer has been released for the movie Brooklyn, based on the 2009 novel by Colm Toibin.

Considered an Oscar contender after it was a hit at the Sundance Film Festival, it is set for release on Nov. 6., starring Saoirse Ronan and directed by John Crowley. The screenplay is by Nick Hornby.

Tie-in:

According the the Sunday Times of London, the film version of The Girl on the Train will be set in upstate New York

The book, set in London, was inspired by author Paula Hawkins’ own commute. She tells the Times, “I’m not really concerned about the repositioning as I think it is the type of story that could take place in any commuter town.” She adds that she will not be work on the movie, saying, “I don’t want to be involved … let them get on with it.”

British actress Emily Blunt is in talks to star in the DreamWorks film directed by The Help’s Tate Taylor. There’s no word on whether she will adopt an American accent for the role. No word yet on when it will begin filming, Blunt is currently at work on another movie, The Huntsman, scheduled for release in April, 2016.

Set photos have just been released from the film adaptation of the mashup, Pride Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith (Quirk Books, 2009), Entertainment Weekly notes it will be different from “the over-the-top ” Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.

Director Burr Steers (Charlie St. Cloud) clearly wants to distance his film from that box office disaster, saying, “The idea was that it was Pride and Prejudice set in this alternate world and then for everyone to play it straight … The movie’s big wink is that there is no big wink.”

PP&Z stars the currently hot actress Lily James (Cinderella, Downton Abbey) as Elizabeth Bennett, with Sam Riley as Mr. Darcy. It is scheduled to hit screens 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.

This tantalizing trailer was posted on YouTube yesterday:

Unfortunately, it seems it’s a hoax, Variety reports that a Netflix spokesperson says the company had nothing to do with it. They also report that “The video in the fake trailer appears to be from the 2004 movie adaptation starring Jim Carrey, while the song is an excerpt of Missed Me by the Dresden Dolls, a Boston-based ‘punk cabaret’ duo.”

Netflix announced last November that they plan to adapt Daniel Handler’s Lemony Snicket books, but there’s been no news since.

Sometimes movie adaptations bring new attention to the books they are based on, and sometimes all it takes it the release of the movie trailer.

USA Today notes that Andy Weir’s debut sci-fi novel, The Martian (RH/Crown), rose to its highest level, #4 on their June 18 best seller list, following the tailer’s debut. This week, it is still in the top ten, at #9.

The tie-in features a closeup of Matt Damon, who stars as an astronaut stranded on Mars. The movie debuts on  Oct. 2.

The Martian (Mass Market MTI)
Andy Weir
RH/Broadway; October 13, 2015
Mass Market; $9.99 USD, $12.99 CAD
9781101905005, 110190500X

The “first look” trailer in May was only the beginning. Now we have the “Official First Trailer”  for the movie Steve Jobs based on the book by Walter Isaacson (S&S, 2012).

For a while it looked like the movie might not come together at all. Directors were changed, several potential leads dropped out (including Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale). As Entertainment Weekly reports, once Michael Fassbinder was on board, the rest fell into place quickly.

Directed by  Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire 2008), the script is written by Aaron Sorkin (West Wing, The Newsroom, The Social Network). The screenplay reportedly is in three acts, each based on one of Jobs’s major launches. Kate Winslet, who plays one of the original Apple employees, said in a recent interview, “Each act is continuous 45 minutes backstage of real time at each launch that Steve Jobs made during those time periods — ‘84 was the launch of the Macintosh, ‘88 was the NeXT computer, ‘98 was the iMac. Each act takes place backstage and literally ends with him walking from the wings on to the stage to rapturous applause.”

The movie arrives Oct. 9.

A tie-in has not yet been announced.