Eddie Redmayne already has one Oscar for his startling physical transformation as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. Another may be in the works.

In the upcoming film adaptation of  David Ebershoff’s first novel, The Danish Girl, (Penguin/Viking, 2000; NYT review), he will play a man who in the 1930’s had one of the earliest transgender surgeries.

The release date has just been announced for Thanksgiving weekend, making it Oscar bait.

A first look at Eddie Redmayne in the role was released on Twitter last week:

One of the moment’s hottest directors Richard Linklater (Boyhood) may direct the film adaptation of one of the surprise hits of 2012, Maria Semple’s debut novel Where’d You Go, Bernadette, (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; Thorndike).

A script is already in place, according to The Hollywood Reporter, written by the team behind Fault in Our Stars.

UPDATE: Thanks to Misha for correcting us in the comments. Bernadette was actually Marie Semple’s second novel, a fact she wryly notes in her book trailer, which follows her as she searches for a way to pitch the book (with a few famous friends):

Jennifer Lawrence (Hunger Games, Winter’s Bone, Silver Linings Playbook) is set to star as a combat photojournalist in an adaptation of Lynsey Addario’s just released memoir,  It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War (Penguin, Feb. 10; OverDrive Sample). Steven Spielberg is attached to direct.

Warner Bros. won what Deadline characterizes as a “whirlwind auction” for the film rights, adding”The memoir has been the hot title since it was excerpted by The New York Times Magazine, and there were no shortage of bidders for the life of a woman who goes into the most dangerous places in the world in search of truth.”

The book has also been featured on NPR’s Fresh Air, Elle, Entertainment Weekly, Time, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and it debuted at #11 on the 3/8 NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Seller list.

Below, Addario appears on The Daily Show:

Following the success of Fifty Shades of Grey at the box office, The Hollywood Reporter looks at four other erotic novels that are making their way to screens. All of them are still in the development phase, with no directors or actors attached, so they could use pitches. Below are our suggestions:

Crossfire series, Sylvia Day (Penguin Berkley; first in the series, Bared to You, above left, with cover riffing on the iconic Fifty Shades tie) —  Set in an ad agency, rights were acquired two years ago by Lionsgate for a TV series, so, of course, it’s “Fifty Shades meets Mad Men.”

Beautiful Bastard, Christina Lauren (S&S/Gallery) — About a hardworking, ambitious assistant and her difficult boss, it’s “Fifty Shades meets Working Girl.” (note the book cover makes reference to BOTH a tie and cuff links).

After, Anna Todd (S&S/Gallery) — This boy-band fan fiction was signed for a film adaptation by Paramount Pictures last fall. It will inevitably be pitched as “Fifty Shades meets One Direction” but a warning, when this “watt-pad sensation” was published in book form, it did not have the success of Shades of Grey, so it may turn out to be “Fifty Shades meets John Carter.”

On the Island, Tracey Garvis Graves, (Penguin Plume)  — A romance about a woman who is shipwrecked with the teen age boy she has been tutoring. It is “Fifty Shades meets Cast Away.”

It would seem last night’s big Oscar winner, Birdman, a movie with an original script, would have little effect on books, but since its October release, it has caused Raymond Carver’s short story collection, What We Talk About When Talk About Love, (RH/Vintage) to increase in sales by 121%, reports Publishers Weekly. The movie, about an actor trying to score a creative comeback through a Broadway adaptation of the title story, includes several quotes from Carver, references to the title, as well as enactments of scenes from the story.

As a result, publisher RH/Vintage is releasing it as an ebook for the first time (there is a version currently available to libraries, but in Mandarin).

An original, unedited manuscript of the story, called Beginners, is also available in Raymond Carver: Collected Stories, (Penguin/Library of America). RH/Vintage will also release it as a standalone ebook in September.

Library holds are light so far. The movie has just been released on demand, so interest may grow.

UPDATE: The Telegraph writes about Carver’s influence on the director. saying the movie’s main character “could have flown right in from a 21st-century Carver story.”

TV and movie rights to librarian and bookseller favorite, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, (RH/Knopf, Sept., 2014; RH Audio; Thorndike) have been acquired by Scott Steindorff (producer of Jon Favreau’s Chef).

A number of directors are circling the project according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The novel was a LibraryReads Top Ten Favorite for the year, a National Book Awards finalist and on multiple best books lists.

Oh, my Mr. Grey, I can’t LEGO of your playroom!

(Click here for a less interesting version).

The movie that went through so many changes that many wondered if it would ever become a reality, Steve Jobs, based on Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of the same title (S&S, 2011), is now set for release on Oct 9, a date that, as Variety notes, is “just in time for awards season.”

Currently shooting in the San Francisco area, it stars Michael Fassbender as  Jobs, in a role originally intended for Leonardo DiCaprio and then for Christian Bale. Seth Rogen plays Steve Wozniak, Kate Winslet, former Macintosh marketing head Joanna Hoffman, and Jeff Daniels, Apple CEO John Sculley.

The film rights for Meg Wolitzer’s sixth novel, The Wife, (S&S/Scribner, 2003) were signed years ago, but the project is just now heating up.

Last May, it was announced that Glenn Close had signed as the lead with Swedish filmmaker Bjorn Runge directing.

The main cast was recently announced:

Joan Castleman — Glenn Close

Joe Castleman — Jonathan Pryce

David Cattleman, their son — Logan Lerman

Nathaniel Bone, Joe Castleman’s biographer — Christian Slater

Young Joan Castleman — Brit Marling

McDormand her mentor — Frances McDormand

The novel is about a woman who puts aside her own writing career to support her husband’s. He then rewards her by philandering and ignoring their children. It was described in a New York Times review as “a near heartbreaking document of feminist realpolitik.”  The feminist angle may have been lost on the movie’s director who calls it, “the story of love, creativity and a secret larger than life itself that the main characters, Joan and Joe, are carrying.”

Shooting is expected to begin this spring.

Casting is about to begin for Ang Lee’s adaptation of Ben Fountain’s novel about a group of soldiers returning home from Iraq, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, (HarperCollins/Ecco, 2012), set to start production in mid-April.

Applauded for the use of 3D in his adaptation of Life of Pi, the press release promises even more for Billy Lynn, “The film will explore new methods, both technological and artistic, with the goal of further engaging the audience.  Lee … 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.”

A debut novel, it was the winner of the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award and a finalist for the National Book Awards. The Washington Post called it, “a masterful gut-punch of a debut novel … a razor-sharp, darkly comic novel — a worthy neighbor to Catch-22 on the bookshelf of war fiction.”

We envy this headline from New York magazine’s Vulture blog, “Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobs Movie Begins Filming With Cast Full of People Who Haven’t Dropped Out Yet.”

Yes, the movie based on Walter Isaacson’s biography has suffered through many changes. Both Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale were breathlessly announced as stars, only to drop out. It has also changed studios (from Sony to Universal) and directors (from David Fincher to Danny Boyle) and had to endure another film being released with a similar title, Jobs starring Ashton Kutcher.

Universal’s announcement this week that production has begun in San Francisco may raise skepticism, but the company insists that Michael Fassbender is set to play Jobs, with Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak, Kate Winslet as former Macintosh marketing head Joanna Hoffman, Jeff Daniels as Apple CEO John Sculley. Boyle is still directing.

Called the “The [Sundance Film] festival’s most hotly anticipated documentary,” by USA Today, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief is getting a chilly reception from the film’s subject after its Sunday premiere. Entertainment Weekly reports the Church is responding “aggressively,” through social media and ads in the New York Times.

Based on the 2013 book by Lawrence Wright (RH/Knopf), who also is a producer on the film, it is set to air on HBO on March 16. The book itself is called a “a masterpiece of in-depth reporting packed to the brim with insane details and shocking revelations,” this week in Salon.

The film’s claims are getting attention in a wide range of news sources, from People magazine and USA Today to NPR’s Morning Edition.

Before it was published in 2008, Ridley Scott bought the film rights to the heavily promoted, and well-received debut Cold War era thriller, Child 44, (Hachette/Grand Central), by Tom Rob Smith. A trailer was just released for the resulting film that will land in theaters on April 17

Directed by Daniel Espinosa (Safe House), it stars Tom Hardy as a demoted Russian secret police agent battling both his superiors and his unhappy wife, played by Noomi Rapace, as he tries to track down a serial killer who targets children.

The book was the first in a trilogy, followed by The Secret Speech (2009) and  Agent 6, (2012).

Tie-in (for other movie tie-ins, check our Edelweiss collection; for other upcoming book adaptations, check our listing):

Child 44
Tom Rob Smith
Hachette/Grand Central: March 31, 2015
Trade Paperback

Disney’s live-action musical of Beauty and the Beast has found its Belle; Emma Watson, who began her movie career at age eleven playing Hermione in the Harry Potter movies, has signed on for the lead.

It is set to be directed by  Stephen Chbosky, who also directed Watson in the adaptation of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, (S&S/MTV Books, 2012).

No news on whether she is still committed to star in Warner Brothers’ adaptation of Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen (Harper, July, 2014).

Behind American Sniper, a second, quieter film did well at the box office this weekend. Also the recipient of good timing  Still Alice, based on the novel by Lisa Genova, expanded nationwide this weekend and was able to capitalize on the movie’s star, Julianne Moore, becoming the front-runner for this year’s Best Actress Oscar.

It’s a Cinderella story for both the book and the movie. Unable to get an agent for the book, Genova self-published it. Her guerrilla marketing was so successful that she then landed an agent and a mainstream publisher, Simon & Schuster. Released as an original trade paperback in 2009, it went on to become a best seller. Appropriately, as the author recently told the Boston Globe, for the film rights, the she took a chance on a “very small new production company,” because she felt, “they really understood the intent of the story.”

In libraries we checked, Still Alice is neck-and-neck in holds with American Sniper.

Genova, a neuroscientist, has published two novels since, both dealing with brain disorders. Left Neglected is about the results of a brain injury and Love Anthony, about autism. In her next novel, Inside the O’Briens, (S&S/Gallery; S&S Audio; 4/7/14), she writes about a family dealing with Huntington’s Disease.

Tie-ins:

Still Alice, Lisa Genova
S&S.Gallery: December 16, 2014
Trade Paperback

Mass Market, S&S/Pocket Books

Audio CD, &S Audio