The Clint Eastwood movie American Sniper, based on Chris Kyle’s autobiography, was a big winner at the box office this weekend, giving the movie industry much-needed hope.The timing of the film’s wide release, immediately after the Oscar nominations were announced, is considered a big factor in its success.

Another is the film’s patriotic appeal, although that is being question by several who object to the movie making a hero of a man who said in his book, “The enemy are savages and despicably evil,” and his “only regret is that I didn’t kill more.”

The movie’s subject, the late Chris Kyle is getting renewed attention, including this story on NBC’s Nightly News:

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As a result, his book, which has been a long-running best seller, now occupies three spots on the Amazon top 10, with another editions is at #64:

#1 —   Mass market ed. with original cover, (Harper, 2013)
#5 —   Trade pbk tie-in (HarperCollins/Morrow Paperbacks, 2014)
#8 —   Hardcover memorial edition (HarperCollins/Morrow, 2013)
#64 — Mass market. tie-in, (Harper, 2014)

Best Picture, Actor (Bradley Cooper), Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing

Kyle, Chris, AMERICAN SNIPER, (HarperCollins/Morrow, 2012)

Hodges, Andrew, ALAN TURING: THE ENIGMA, (S&S, 1983; re-released by Princeton U. Press, 2012)

Best Picture, Director, Actor (Benedict Cumberbatch), Supporting Actress (Keira Knightley), Adapted Screenplay, Original Score, Film Editing, Production Design

Pynchon, Thomas, INHERENT VICE, (Penguin Press, 2009)

Best Adapted Screenplay

Hawking, Jane, TRAVELING TO INFINITY: MY LIFE WITH STEPHEN, (Alma Books, 2007)

Best Picture, Actor (Eddie Redmayne), Actress (Felicity Jones), Adapted Screenplay, Original Score

Schultz, Mark & David Thomas, FOXCATCHER, Penguin/Dutton, 11/4/14)

Best Director, Actor (Steve Carell), Supporting Actor (Mark Ruffalo), Best Original Screenplay

Genova, Lisa, STILL ALICE, (S&S/Pocket Books, 2009)

Best Actress (Julianne Moore)

Flynn, Gillian, GONE GIRL, (2012)

Best Actress (Rosamund Pike)

Strayed, Cheryl, WILD, (RH/Knopf 2012)

Best Actress (Reese Witherspoon), Supporting Actress (Laura Dern)

Commenting on the slate of Oscar nominations announced yesterday, Entertertainment Weekly notes,

“Well, it’s certainly going to be one white, male Oscars.

With no people of color nominated in the acting categories, no stories about women included in the best picture race, and even Gone Girl novelist/screenwriter … Gillian Flynn omitted from the best adapted screenplay category, the Academy demonstrated its lack of diversity today in a big way.”

Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, based on the book by Laura Hillenbrand, was not nominated for either Best Picture or  Best Director. It only received nominations for Best Cinematography, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing.

Neither is Unbroken nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. The nominees in that category are:

American Sniper, Jason Hall — based on Kyle, Chris, American Sniper,  (HarperCollins/Morrow, 2012)

The Imitation Game, Graham Moore — Hodges, Andrew, Alan Turing: The Enigma, (S&S, 1983; re-released by Princeton U. Press, 2012)

Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson — Pynchon, Thomas, Inherent Vice, (Penguin Press, 2009)

The Theory of Everything, Anthony McCarten — Hawking, Jane, Traveling To Infinity: My Life With Stephen, (Alma Books, 2007)

Whiplash, Damien Chazelle

If you’re wondering about the latter, so are many others, including the film’s creators. The Academy decided that since writer/director Damian Chazelle released another short film on the same subject in 2013, also called Whiplash, the feature film technically falls into the category of being “based on material previously published or produced.”

The other major nominations for book adaptations are:

American Sniper, Best Picture, Actor (Bradley Cooper), Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing — based on Kyle, Chris, American Sniper, (HarperCollins/Morrow, 2012)

The Imitation Game, Best Picture, Director, Actor (Benedict Cumberbatch), Supporting Actress (Keira Knightley), Adapted Screenplay, Original Score, Film Editing, Production Design– Hodges, Andrew, Alan Turing: The Enigma, (S&S, 1983; re-released by Princeton U. Press, 2012)

The Theory of Everything, Best Picture, Actor (Eddie Redmayne), Actress (Felicity Jones), Adapted Screenplay, Original Score — Hawking, Jane, Traveling To Infinity: My Life With Stephen, (Alma Books, 2007)

Still Alice, Best Actress (Julianne Moore) — Genova, Lisa, Still Alice, (S&S/Pocket Books, 2009)

Gone Girl, Best Actress (Rosamund Pike) — Flynn, Gillian, Gone Girl, (2012)

Wild, Best Actress (Reese Witherspoon), Supporting Actress (Laura Dern) — Strayed, Cheryl, Wild, (RH/Knopf 2012)

The following has a book tie-in, which was released around the same time as the movie:

Foxcatcher, Best Director, Actor (Steve Carell), Supporting Actor (Mark Ruffalo), Best Original Screenplay — Mark Schultz & David Thomas, Foxcatcher: The True Story of My Brother’s Murder, John du Pont’s Madness, and the Quest for Olympic Gold, (Penguin/Dutton, 11/4/14).

Why is Foxcatcher getting a nomination for Original Screenplay? It’s a complicated story, but it seems that Schultz sent the unpublished book to the filmmakers. The movie they made was based on the story, with Schultz consulting, but not technically the book, which was published later.

For Best Animated Feature, three of the nominations are adapted from print sources:

Big Hero 6 — Seagle, Steven T. and Duncan Rouleau, comics (Marvel)

The Boxtrolls — Alan Snow, Here Be Monsters!, (Atheneum, 2008, rereleased 8/5/14)

How to Train Your Dragon 2 — characters by Cressida Crowell

Never underestimated the importance of the Oscars to a movie’s bottom line.

Just a few months after the release of the first trailer for Ron Howard’s adaptation of  Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea and the announcement of a March 13 release, comes a change in date to, you guessed it, one that falls right in the awards season sweet spot, Dec. 11, 2015.

As a result, the tie-ins are likely to be moved to a later release date.

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (Movie Tie-in)
Nathaniel Philbrick
Penguin, Trade Paperback Feb. 24, 2015
9780143126812, 0143126814

Audio: Feb. 24, 2015
Nathaniel Philbrick, Scott Brick
9781611763577, 1611763576

Talk about your moneyball. The film version of Michael Lewis’s best seller about the financial meltdown, The Big Short, (Norton, 2011).has attracted some big stars, Brad Pitt, Christian Bale and Ryan Gosling, will star according to Variety. Pitt is producing.

Pitt, of course, starred in an adaptation of another title by Lewis, Moneyball, (Norton, 2003).

Before that, the movie based on his 2006 book,  The Blind Side, (Norton), was also a hit.

Aaron Sorkin, who was wrote the screenplay for  Moneyball, bought the rights to Lewis most recent title, Flash Boys, (Norton, 2014) and it was reported to be on his “front burner” after his success with Newsroon, but hacked Sony emails indicate he has passed on the project.

Amid protests that the “R” rating for the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey is too mild, a new trailer debuted during the broadcast of the Golden Globes awards. This one offers a glimpse of a new “Grey,” Marcia Gay Harden as Christian’s mother.

The movie, of course, will be released on Valentine’s Day weekend.

AMC has landed the rights to a TV mini-series adaptation of The Night Manager, based on the 1993 novel by by John le Carré. Starring Tom Hiddleston (The Avengers) and Hugh Laurie (House), it will be directed by Academy Award winner Susanne Bier (In a Better World) and is set to begin shooting this spring.

The author’s first post-Cold War novel, it was a best seller, but is no longer in print and is not on recent critics’s lists of the author’s best works:

John le Carré Starter Kit – Dwight Garner, NY Times

Which Is the Best John le Carré Novel?  David Denby, The New Yorker

6 Classic le Carré Novels to Read After A Most Wanted Man, New York magazine

Top 10 John le Carré novels – Telegraph

Shooting has wrapped on a movie adaptation of another le Carre novel, Our Kind of Traitor, (Penguin/Viking, 2010), starring Ewan McGregor, Naomie Harris and Damian Lewis, directed by Susanna White. A U.S. release date has not been announced.

The film adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand’s long-running best seller Unbroken has served to keep that book on the NYT Best Seller List in hardcover for 189 weeks. In addition, the tie-in is #1 on the paperback list after 23 weeks and YA version is #8 on that list after 8 weeks.

Now a new title joins the pack, Zamperini’s own, which he finished just before his death at 97 last year. Don’t Give Up, Don’t Give In: Lessons from an Extraordinary Life by Louis Zamperini, David Rensin, (HarperCollins/Dey Street Books; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample) debuts on the new hardcover nonfiction list at #9.

Reviewing it when it came out in November, USA Today warned that other than shedding “more light on the reality of post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), which afflicted Zamperini,” it doesn’t go much beyond Hillenbrand’s book. It does, however, exude “the nothing-to-lose honesty of a nonagenarian whose to-hell-and-back history results in a spiritual self-satisfaction.”

Holds are light in most libraries.

Unbroken isn’t the only movie causing a rise in sales for related books.

Debuting on this week’s NYT paperback nonfiction list at #10 is Alan Turing: The Enigma, by Andrew Hodges, (Princeton U.P.), the basis for The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing.

It joins Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time (RH/Bantam), at #5 after six weeks, returning to the lists after its original publication in 1988 as a result of the movie, The Theory of Everything, which is actually based on the memoir by Hawking’s wife Jane from 2007, now re-eeleased as a tie-in, Travelling to Infinity: The True Story Behind The Theory of Everything by Jane Hawking, (Alma Books, November 7, 2014). NOTE: Thanks to Kate Hull for the update on the tie-in.

Actor Paul Rudd will appear this summer as the diminutive superhero, Ant-Man.

He’s also set to star, reports Variety, in an adaptation of a novel that librarians embraced, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison (Workman/Algonquin; Highbridge Audio; Thorndike Large Print).

Shooting is scheduled to begin this month.

News of the many award nominations for Julianne Moore’s performance as a victim of early onset Alzheimer’s disease in Still Alice has brought attention to the movie even though it won’t open in most cities until February (it had a limited Oscar-qualifying run in early Dec., will open in  NYC and L.A. on Jan 16, before expanding to more theaters).

The book it is based on, Still Alice by Lisa Genova (S&S/Gallery, 2009), is also rising on Amazon sales rankings (now at #26 and rising) and shows growing holds in libraries.

One of the film’s producers, Maria Shriver, featured the author in a segment on the Today Show (a slightly different version was featured on last night’s NBC Nightly News).

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Genova tells the Boston Globe that the success of both the book and the movie are “humbling” surprises. Unable to get an agent for the book, she self-published it. Her guerrilla marketing was so successful that she then landed an agent and a mainstream publisher, Simon & Schuster. For the movie rights, she went with a “very small new production company in London,” because she felt, “they really understood the intent of the story.”

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, on 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

Move over Jaws, an even scarier sea creature is about to hit the screens.

The second trailer has just been released for Ron Howard’s  In the Heart of the Sea, scheduled to open in theaters on March 13. It is based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s 2000 National Book Award winner of the same title, about the Essex, a Nantucket whaling ship that was stalked and eventually sunk by a sperm whale South Pacific in 1819, setting the crew adrift for 90 days.

This new trailer gives a sense of how frightening that whale will be on the big screen.

Tie ins (for tie-ins to all upcoming book adaptations, check our Edelweiss catalog):

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (Movie Tie-in)
Nathaniel Philbrick
Penguin, Trade Paperback January 27, 2015

Audio: January 27, 2015
Nathaniel Philbrick, Scott Brick

Related Titles

There’s several books about the incident, offering opportunities for display.

Foremost is the classic novel, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, who appears in the movie, played by Ben Whishaw.  In turn, the novel was inspired by an eyewitness account, written by the Essex’s first mate Owen Chase, played by Chris Hemsworth, published in 1821 under the wonderful title, Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-ship Essex, of Nantucket Which Was Attacked and Finally Destroyed by A Large Spermaceti-whale, in the Pacific Ocean; With An Account of the Unparalleled Sufferings of the Captain and the Crew during a Space of Ninety-Three Days at Sea, in Open Boats, in the Years 1819 & 1820. It still available in several editions, but with much shorter titles, including The Loss of the Ship Essex, Sunk by a Whale, (Penguin Classics, 2000) with an introduction by Philbrick.

In addition to his book for adults, Philbrick also published a version of the story for young readers, Revenge of the Whale, (Penguin/Puffin, 2004).

Following dozens of protests over canceling the release of the movie The Interview due to threats from hackers, Sony did an about face on Monday, and announced they would authorize screenings.

The movie is currently scheduled for release in 292 theaters on Christmas Day, followed by 91 more after the New Year (far fewer than the 2,000 originally planned). The four largest chains, however — Regal, AMC, Cinemark and Carmke — are still refusing to show it, reports the New York Times.

PEN recently released a letter signed by nearly 50 authors, including Salman Rushdie and Neil Gaiman, as well as several publishers, urging Sony to “demonstrate the power of free expression by denying the cowards who made these threats the satisfaction of thinking they have succeeded,” and saying, “The attack on Sony Pictures is an assault on the wider creative community; one that must be met with unity and resolve.”

The film adaptation of Lisa Genova’s novel Still Alice  (S&S/Gallery, 2009) won’t open in most theaters until mid-January, but reviews and publicity have already arrived, based on its Oscar-qualifying one week release in New York and Los Angeles. More will be coming as Oscar season heats up.

Julianne Moore iis considered a shoe-in for a best actress nomination for her portrayal of a woman dealing with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. USA Today says it’s  “one of the best in her career … Her performance powerfully captures the growing confusion caused by the debilitating illness.”

A new trailer focuses on Moore, also featuring Kristen Stewart as her daughter and Alec Baldwin as her husband.

Tie-ins came out this week:

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

Mass Market, S&S/Pocket Books

Audio CD, &S Audio

The arrival of the holidays coincides with the end-of-the-year cut-off for Oscar qualification. As a result, movie releases shift into a higher gear in the upcoming weeks, beginning with the wide release tonight of the final Hobbit movie, expected to bring in $75 million by Sunday.

But there’s no surer sign of the arrival of a big movie than an SNL sketch:

In fact, this holiday is so crowded that the Weinstein company ended up changing the release date of their big kid’s movie, Paddington, to January 16. Little did they know that one of the major Christmas releases, The Interview, would end up being cancelled by most major theater chains (reminder: 25 years ago, independent bookstores stood up to threats against selling Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses)

Below are the book-related movies scheduled through the end of the year (for all upcoming movies based on books, check our listing. For tie-ins, check our catalog on Edelweiss).

12/19 — Annie

This live action movie is based on the musical, which in turn is based on the Little Orphan Annie comic strips by Harold Gray, it stars the youngest-ever Oscar nominee, Quvenzhané Wallis, as Annie and Jamie Foxx as Will Stacks (a new version of Daddy Warbucks) with Cameron Diaz chewing up the scenery as a conniving Miss Hannigan.  See the trailer here

Scholastic has the tie-ins:

Annie: The Junior Novel (Movie Tie-In), Lexi Ryals

Annie: A True Family (Movie Tie-In), Calliope Glass

12/25  — American Sniper

After an Oscar-qualifying limited release on Christmas Day, this opens across the country on Jan 16. Originally a Steven Spielberg film, Clint Eastwood is the director. It stars Bradley Cooper and  Sienna Miller. Trailer

Jesse Ventura is helping keep the book in the news by suing over its mention of him (it seems the movie doesn’t include that scene).

Tie-in:

American Sniper [Movie Tie-in Edition], Chris Kyle, (HarperCollins/Morrow)

12/25 — Unbroken

With Angelina Jolie as director, this has already received major advance attention (she’s already appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to promote it). Trailer

Tie-in:

Get ready for a resurgence of the popularity of the name Ruby. Steven Spielberg has just announced that 10-year-old British actress Ruby Barnhill will star in his adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1982 children’s book, The BFG, (Macmillan/FSG YR).

In a statement, Spielberg gives the young actress high praise, “After a lengthy search, I feel Roald Dahl himself would have found Ruby every bit as marvelous as we do.” She will play a young girl named Sophie who befriends a giant, played by Mark Rylance.

Disney plans to release the film on July 1, 2016.

Meanwhile, BBC One has completed another Dahl adaptation,  a TV movie based on Esio Trot, starring Judi Dench and Dustin Hoffman. It is scheduled to air in the U.K. on New Years Day. U.S. rights have been acquired by the Weinstein Co., but the U.S. release date has not been announced.