Teasing Americans, BBC One has released a trailer for the seven-part adaptation of Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which begins in the U.K.in May. It is set to air on BBC America, but the release date has not yet been announced.

Adding to the frustration, The Sunday Times of London says the series “could be magic” because it’s “a perfect fit for the new age of small-screen drama.”

Neil Gaiman writes in The Guardian how he fell under the book’s spell in 2004 and continues to love it to this day. The book’s author Susanna Clarke describes the weird sensation of seeing “my own characters walking about.  A playwright or screenwriter must expect it; a novelist doesn’t and naturally concludes that she has gone mad.”

The U.S. tie-in is scheduled for the end of this month.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke
Macmillan/Bloomsbury USA, May 26, 2015
9781620409909, 1620409909
Trade Paperback, $18.00 USD, $20.00 CAD

Ever since the French trailer for animated movie The Little Prince was released in December, fans have been salivating for more. In anticipation of the Cannes Film Festival, where it will premiere, an English language trailer was just released, but there’s still no news on when the film will open in the U.S..

Featuring the voices of Jeff Bridges, Mackenzie Foy, Rachel McAdams, James Franco, Marion Cotillard, Benicio del Toro, Paul Giamatti, Paul Rudd, Budd Cort, Ricky Gervais, and Albert Brooks, it is directed by Mark Osborn (Kung Fu Panda).

Although it is based on the beloved book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, it also introduces the story-within-a story of a modern day young girl learning about the book through a neighbor, the now aged Aviator (Jeff Bridges).

Tie-ins have not been announced, but HMH is releasing a new translation in hardcover in October as well as several Little Prince board books,

Published last year, The Pilot and the Little Prince: The Life of Antione de Saint-Exupery, written and illustrated by Peter Sis (Macmillan/FSG/Frances Foster) was on several best children’s books lists, including the New York Times 10 Best Illustrated books and EarlyWord Kids Contributor Lisa Von Drasek’s list of best informational books.

Author/illustrator Sis talks about his inspiration in the following video:

The one thing we understood from Jon Stewart’s interview with Elizabeth Olsen about the movie in which she stars, Avengers: The Age Of Ultron, opening this week and expected to a major blockbuster, is that you probably need to be a fan boy to get the references.

This may help:

Well, maybe not.

If you prefer to do your own background research, Wired magazine offers “5 Comics That’ll Get You Ready for Avengers: Age of Ultron.”

There are several movie tie-ins (check our Movie Tie-in Collection for full listings).

Take heart, YA series fans. If a book doesn’t succeed as a movie adaptation, it may go to TV, and vice versa.

The CW network played a game of on again, off again with their plans to develop a series based on Kiera Cass’s YA title, The Selection (HarperTeen, 2012), finally abandoning the idea after two tries, each going as far as the pilot stage. Now, according to Deadline, Warner Bros. has won the film rights and has a screen writer set to adapt it for the big screen.

The fourth novel in the series, The Heir (HarperTeen), arrives next week.

On the other hand, the movie based on The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones, the first in the Y.A. urban fantasy series by Cassandra Clare, made it to the screen, but plans to turn it into a franchise died along with the box office receipts. ABC Family now plans to create a spin-off TV series, titled Shadowhunters, and has just announced that Dominic Sherwood (Vampire Academy) has won the male lead.

New trade paperback editions of the six titles in the series as well as of the 3-part prequel series, Infernal Devices are coming in September.

Nearly a year after acquiring the film rights to We Were Liars, E. Lockhart, (RH/Delacorte; Listening Library), Imperative Entertainment announces they have hired a screenwriter.

The newly formed company won the rights in competitive auction prior to the book’s publication,

One of the LibraryReads Top Ten favorites the book was on most of the year’s childrens and YA best books lists.

Audio sample:

Back in November of 2012, months after it began its slow and steady climb up the NYT Children’s Best Sellers list, Lionsgate bought the film rights to Wonder by R.J. Palacio, (RH/ Knopf Young Readers).

After announcing a director just this past fall, Lionsgate has a new one in place, Paddington director Paul King. The  book is #1 on the NYT Children’s Middle Grade best seller list after 125 weeks.

The hit of this year’s Sundance Film Festival was a teen rom com about a girl with cancer, adapted from a book, Jesse Andrews’ Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, (Abrams, 2012). The screening won a standing ovation, the Audience Award for best drama, as well as the Grand Jury Prize, over-the-top reviews and Oscar predictions (see our list of other book adaptations in the early Oscars pool).

Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, the movie opens in limited release on June 12.

The trailer, released yesterday, gives a sense of what the excitement is about.

Official Site: meandearlmovie.com

Tie-in (note: we recently added dozens of new titles to our tie-ins listing; our full list of upcoming movie and TV adaptations is here).

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (Movie Tie-in Edition)
Jesse Andrews
ABRAMS/Amulet Paperbacks: June 9, 2015
9781419719462, 1419719467
Trade Paperback, $9.95 USD, $11.95 CAD

UPDATE: The release date is now set for 8/7/15

The enormous success of the movie based on Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl leaves fans wondering what has happened to the adaptation of another Flynn novel, Dark Places with an A-list cast headed by Charlize Theron.

Originally scheduled for release on Sept. 1, that date has come and gone with no further news. The movie just premiered in Paris, complete with Theron dazzling in Dior, to a mixed, but mostly positive review from The Hollywood Reporter, and a more negative one from Variety, and the note it will be released in the U.S.  “later this year,”

Perhaps the tie-in, now scheduled for release in June, offers a clue that it will arrive in the fall.

Meanwhile, as we noted earlier, Flynn’s first novel, Sharp Objects, is being adapted as a TV series.

Flynn, who has a developing career in Hollywood, is now at work on an original script with 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen.

Filming is set to begin on director Ang Lee’s adaptation of Ben Fountain’s award-winning novel about a group of soldiers returning home from Iraq, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, (HarperCollins/Ecco; Dreamscape Audio, 2012).

In talks to join the cast is Twilight‘s Kristin Stewart, most recently seen in a supporting role in Still Alice starring Julianne Moore and based on the book by Lisa Genova.

The Billy Lynn cast includes newcomer Joe Alwyn in the starring role, along with Garrett Hedlund and Steve Martin.

Considered a modern-day Catch 22, Ben Fountain’s novel is not a traditional war story, but the press release that announced the film project promises that the director, know for his ground-breaking special effects, as in the 3-D Life of Pi, “… envisions creating a new way for audiences to experience drama, including the heightened sensation that soldiers really feel on the battlefield and on the home front.”

Hollywood is now mad for military movies based on books, cued by the success of American Sniper. Several nonfiction titles are currently set for adaptation.

Gearing up is a film based on 13 Hours: The Inside Account Of What Really Happened In Benghazi by Mitchell Zuckoff (Hachette/Twelve, 9/9/14). Directed by Michael Bay it will star John Krasinski, James Badge Dale, Max Martini, Pablo Schreiber and Freddie Stroma (Pitch Perfect). Filming is about to begin on a set that is currently being built in Malta.

Recently, a heated auction for war photographer Lynsey Addario’s memoir, It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War (Penguin Press, 2/5/15) ended with Steven Spielberg set to direct and Jennifer Lawrence in the lead. The rights to another women-in war book, Ashley’s War, The Untold Story Of A Team of Women Soldiers On The Special Ops Battlefield by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon (Harper, 4/21/15), were recently won at auction by Reese Witherspoon.

Television is also in on the act. NBC recently picked up the Weinstein Co.’s 6 hour series based on The Reaper by Nicholas Irving with Gary Brozek, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s).

For more, see our list of upcoming book adaptations, as well as our list of tie-ins.

Mashups seem to be over, but zombies are still with us, as proved by the CW’s new series iZombie and AMC’s The Walking Dead, which just wrapped its fifth season.

So maybe there’s hope that the film version of Pride Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith (Quirk Books, 2009), now scheduled to hit screens on Feb. 19, 2016, will avoid the fate of that box office disaster, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.

Directed by Burr Steers (Charlie St. Cloud), PP&Z stars the currently hot actress Lily James (Cinderella, Downton Abbey) as Elizabeth Bennett, with Sam Riley as Mr. Darcy. David Russell, celebrated as the director of American Hustle (2013) and Silver Linings Playbook (2012), co-wrote the script with Steers.

For more, see our list of upcoming book adaptations, as well as our list of tie-ins.

Based on Adam Rex’s chapter book, The True Meaning of Smekday, (Disney/Hyperion; Listening Library), the animated Dreamworks movie Home, opened this weekend and outperformed expectations. Variety speculates, “Jeffrey Katzenberg must be breathing a huge sigh of relief after the embattled DreamWorks Animation chief scored a much needed box office win with the release of Home.”

Critics are also fans. The New York Times calls it “a charming concoction with positive messages for younger children about conquering fears, understanding outsiders and knowing yourself.”

Unfortunately, the film reviews don’t mention the original book, which enjoyed a rapturous reception in The New York Times Book Review when it was published in 2007; “a story so original, so absorbing and so laugh-out-loud funny that the minute I read the last page, I want to start at the beginning again … [it] will captivate fans of the wordplay and characters in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld and of the outrageously entertaining satire of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

It happens that rave review is by EarlyWord Kids Correspondent Lisa Von Drasek, who went to see the movie on opening day to see how the book translated to the screen. She reports, “I laughed aloud and enjoyed the reactions from the kids in the audience. One of my favorite book talk moments, in the MoPo (7eleven/WaWa), it is beautifully portrayed. The plot is very different from the book, but it’s a great opportunity to bring an even great audience to the original.” Further, Lisa, an avowed dog person says, “Tip’s cat Pig is one of the best animated characters, ever!”

Written in the form of a time capsule essay by an 11-year-old girl nicknamed Tip (her real name is Gratuity), it begins after aliens called the Boov, have invaded the earth and changed the name Christmas to Smekday (to honor one of the Boov leaders). It was illustrator Adam Rex’s first novel (the sequel, Smek For President, came out in February).

The main character, Tip,  is voiced by singer Rihanna and the Boov alien, named Oh, by Jim Parsons (star of The Big Bang Theory). Fans of the book will remember that character was originally named J.Lo In a twist worthy of the wordplay of the book, the real J.Lo, Jennifer Lopez, voices a different character in the movie.

Tie-ins (for a full list of tie-ins to current and upcoming movies, check our collection on Edelweiss):

Tip’s Tips on Friendship
Thies Schwarz
S&S/Simon Spotlight: February 10, 2015
Trade Paperback: $3.99 USD, $4.99 CAD
Ages 5 to 7, Grades K to 2

Home : The Chapter Book
Tracey West
S&S/Simon Spotlight: February 10, 2015
Trade Paperback: $5.99 USD, $6.99 CAD
Ages 7 to 10, Grades 2 to 5

The Story of One Super Boov
Ellie O’Ryan, Pierre Collet-Derby
S&S/Simon Spotlight: February 10, 2015
Trade Paperback; $3.99 USD, $4.99 CAD
Ages 3 to 7, Grades P to 2
NOTE: This is a 24-page 8 by 8, but it’s sticker-free

UPDATE: Here it is:

And John Green, in a three-on-one interview on the Today Show:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The movie opens on July 24th. The tie-in, as well as tie-ins for other upcoming movies, is included in our continuously updated movie/tv tie-ins collection on Edelweiss.

MTV previewed the trailer to a live audience last night and, yes, everyone was pumped.

USA Today finds it necessary to explain that Paper Towns is NOT The Fault in Our Stars 2.

In the airport, on his way to the Today Show yesterday, John Green explains the meaning of the term “paper towns.”

Mark your calendars: the next Star Wars film, Episode VII The Force Awakens, premiers on December 18, 2015. It picks up after the events of Return of the Jedi and is co-written and directed by J.J. Abrams (his qualifications include directing the TV series Lost and two films in the Star Trek franchise).

A teaser trailer was released in November (the full trailer is rumored to be coming in May):

Related books are also on the way. According to the Disney Publishing/Lucasfilm press release, there will be a lot of them, over 20, for kids, teens, and adults in a range of formats.

Star Wars: Aftermath (Del Rey/Lucas Books; 978-0345511621; Sept. 4), by Chuck Wendig is the first novel in an expected trilogy. According to USA Today, it “bridges the approximately 30-year gap between [Return of the] Jedi and The Force Awakens. With the Emperor and Darth Vader both assumed dead, a new government arises to replace the fallen Empire in the novel.”

Also forthcoming is another of the popular DK visual guides, Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know (Penguin/DK; 978-0241183700; Sept. 4, 2015) and several comics from Marvel, including Star Wars: Journey to the Force Awakens (Marvel Comics; 978-0785197812; Nov. 17).

A full listing of related titles has not been released but Entertainment Weekly offers a rundown of projects in the works as well as the backstory on how the massive, and secret, publishing program was organized.

Given the size of the fan base and their devotion, expect requests far in advance of the Sept. pub. dates.

Oscars 2015 are so yesterday. Hollywood is already beginning to predict 2016’s nominees:

IndieWire, “For Your Consideration: Yep, It’s The 2016 Oscar Predictions,” 2/27/15

Hollywood Reporter, “Oscars 2016: It’s Never Too Early for the Next Best Picture Predictions,” 2/23/15

Esquire, “14 Extremely Premature Predictions About the 2016 Oscars,” 3/9/15

Huffington Post – “Absurdly Early And Unnecessary Oscar Predictions For 2016,” – 2/23/15

These are indeed “premature.” Most of the movies won’t appear in theaters until this fall (it seems Academy members have poor memories, so producers hold off the release of films they consider Oscar bait until later in the year) and none of them have trailers yet, but the picks are useful as an index of which movies are heavily anticipated, by the Hollywood crowd, if not by book lovers.

Fourteen of the films are based on books, one on a Shakespeare play and another on a short story. The number of predictions, with the exception of Steve Jobs, are roughly in  reverse proportion to the popularity of the books they’re based on. The longest-running best seller of the group, The Light Between Oceans, gets just a single nod, for Best Actor, Michael Fassbender (he gets another Best Actor prediction for his lead role in Steve Jobs).

Below are the adaptations, in order by the most significant picks (for a full list of forthcoming movies, check our list of Upcoming Movies Based on Books).

The Revenant, Release date, December 25, limited

Based on — Michael Punke,  The Revenant, originally published in 2002, the author’s first and so far only novel was re-released in hardcover this January by Macmillan/Picador. 

 

“Alejandro G. Inarritu follows Birdman with a period Western starring Tom Hardy and a bearded Leonardo DiCaprio as fur trappers in Indian country.” — The Hollywood Reporter

“… likely to entice Oscar consideration”  — Esquire

Best Picture — IndieWire, Huffington Post

Best Director, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu — IndieWire,  Huffington Post

Best Actor,  Leonardo DiCaprio — IndieWire, Huffington Post

Best Supporting Actor, Tom Hardy — IndieWire

Carol, Release date Fall

Based on — Patricia Highsmith, The Price Of Salt, 1952 (available in trade paperback from Norton, 2004)

“The Weinsteins known how to mount an Oscar campaign, and this return to feature filmmaking by Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven) will surely capture its fair share of headlines, both for its illustrious cast and crew, and because it’s the story of a 1950s housewife (Cate Blanchett) who strikes up a clandestine lesbian affair with a young store clerk (Rooney Mara).” – Esquire

Best Picture — IndieWire, Huffington Post

Best Director, Todd Haynes — IndieWire, Huffington Post

Best Actress, Cate Blanchett — IndieWire,  Huffington Post

Best Supporting Actress, Rooney Mara — IndieWire, Huffington Post

After the jump; fourteen more highly-anticipated adaptations.

(more…)

Calling it “ecstatically reviewed,” Deadline reports that film rights to Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant (RH/Knopf; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample) have been acquired by Scott Rudin, who has been called “The Godfather of the Literary Adaptation”  (Captain Philips, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Moneyball, Angela’s Ashes and the upcoming Jobs, among many others).

Take the comment about the novel being “ecstatically reviewed” with a grain of salt. The daily NYT critic Michiko Kakutani dismissed it as an “eccentric, ham-handed fairy tale.” Neil Gaiman had trouble nailing it down in the NYT Book Review, even after several readings and regretted his “inability to fall in love with it, much as I wanted to.” On NPR, Meg Wolitzer said she anticipated the book for months but was ultimately disappointed. The headline for her review on All Things Considered this week expresses her feeling succinctly, “Ishiguro’s Buried Giant Gets Lost In Its Own Fog.”

On the more ecstatic side is former Washington Post Book World editor, Marie Arana who calls it, “a spectacular, rousing departure from anything Ishiguro has ever written, and yet a classic Ishiguro story.”

Check your holds. Some libraries have reordered to meet demand, while others are doing well with relatively modest initial orders. Based on its rise on Amazon’s sales rankings (currently at #15, the third adult fiction title on the list), we can expect to see it in the top five on the NYT Best Sellers list next week.

Several of Ishiguro’s previous novels have been adapted as films, including The Remains Of The Day (1993) starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, and Never Let Me Go (2010),  Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield.