Released just an hour ago, the first full length trailer of Insurgent. The movie arrives on March 20, 2015.

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The latest trailer for the MTV adaptation of R.L. Stine’s standalone adult novel, Eye Candy (RH/Ballantine, 2004) was just released. The 10-episode series begins on Monday, January 12.

Our preference is for the previous trailer, which focuses on the darker side of social media (that hasn’t stopped MTV from doing an Eye Candy Facebook page, however).

Twilight‘s Catherine Hardwicke is the executive producer of the series that stars Victoria Justice.

The $6.99 mass market paperback (cover at left) is still available.

The film version of Stine’s famous series for kids, Goosebumps, starring Jack Black, is scheduled for release on August 7, 2015.

Stills from it were recently released.

The film adaptation of Stephen King’s It just moved from “In Development” to “Pre-production.”

Vulture reports that the project’s producer Dan Lin confirmed It will be his next project, with filming planned for this summer.

As first announced in 2012, before the he had became a household name for True Detective, Cary Fukunaga will direct at least the first of the planned series of two movies.

Lin says King gave the thumbs-up on the script, saying “This is the version the studio should make.”

In addition, last month it was announced that another of King’s books The Stand is being planned as four films, directed by Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars) directing, with Matthew McConaughey rumored to star.

Released today (and noted on Entertainment Weekly‘s “Shelf Life” blog), the  movie tie-in jacket that’s missing its iconic tie.

The movie, as you probably remember, arrives on Feb. 13.

The tie-in, book and audio, on Jan. 6.

New cast members have been announced for the film adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s award-winning best seller, Room  (Hachette/Little,Brown, 2010).

Brie Larson was cast earlier this year in the role of a woman only known as Ma in the book. Kidnapped as a teenager, she lives in a tiny room with her 5-year-old son, Jack and the story  is told through his eyes. Jacob Tremblay (Surfs 2 — shown here at the premiere of that movie) has been hired for that key role.

Also joining are William H. Macy, presumably as Ma’s captor, Old Nick and Joan Allen in an unspecified role. It is being directed by Lenny Abrahamson from a script written by Donoghue. and is expected to be released in 2015.

A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket is making the leap from big screen to small screen. All 13 titles in the book series have been acquired for adaptation by Netflix.

The first book was adapted as a movie  in 2004, starring Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep and Jude Law. It was originally planned as the beginning of a  film franchise, but that never materialized.

There’s no news yet on who will star, or when it is likely to debut.

The press release quotes the author,

“I can’t believe it,” Mr. Snicket said in a statement from an undisclosed location. “After years of providing top-quality entertainment on demand, Netflix is risking its reputation and its success by associating itself with my dismaying and upsetting books.”

That sense of humor will serve Snicket, (aka Daniel Handler), well when he hosts the upcoming National Book Awards.

The trailer for the movie, below:

Of course, author and exec. producer John Green is VERY excited that filming has begun for the adaptation of Paper Towns.

He’s coy about the specific location, but it’s already been reported that the shoot is in Charlotte, N.C.

The movie is scheduled for theatrical release on June 19, 2015.

Hilary Mantel, author of the Wolf Hall series, recently told an audience that she will not appreciate it if the BBC indulges in the kind of “nonsense” that the Americans brought to history in The Tudors TV series on Showtime.

American audiences will be able to judge for themselves this spring. PBS just announced that they will air the series as part of  “Masterpiece,” beginning April 5. The six-part series stars Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell and Damian Lewis, known to many American primarily as Brody in the first three seasons of Showtime’s Homeland, as Henry VIII.

In an odd bit of timing, the TV series begins after the Broadway opening on March 20th of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s theatrical adaptation, which has been a hit in London (view Act 1, Scene 1). The text of the play will be published in two versions:

Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies: (stage version)
Hilary Mantel, Mike Poulton
Theatre Communications Group; December 16, 2014
Ship Date: November 24, 2014
9780007549894, 000754989X
Trade Paperback, $22.95 USD

Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies: The Stage Adaptation
Hilary Mantel, Mike Poulton
Picador: February 24, 2015
9781250064172, 1250064171
Trade Paperback, $16.00 USD

As to when the third book in the trilogy, The Mirror and The Light will appear, Mantel said it is “unlikely to be ready until 2016.“

The new Disney adaptation of  the 1962 Ray Bradbury classic, Something Wicked This Way Comes (1999 hardcover reissue, Harper Voyager), has just completed the next step in becoming reality, with the hiring of a screenwriter.

It is set to be directed by first-timer Seth Grahame-Smith, who, as an author, has seen other directors adapt two of his books,  Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, to midlling success and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which languished in  development for years until it finally began filming in September (see Entertainment Weekly‘s “first look”).

When the Bradbury project was first announced earlier this year, Grahame-Smith told Deadline, “I have been so crazy about this book, and it was such a formative title in my life that I actually wrote a piece on NPR about why it is so important for young males to read,”

Disney has adapted it before, into a 1983 movie, starring Jason Robards, Jonathan Pryce, Diane Ladd and Pam Grier. Grahame-Smith said he doesn’t intend to remake that movie, “I want the haunted atmosphere that makes the book so chilling, and I want to reinstate some of the classic scenes from the book that were missing from the ’83 film.”

The U.S. release of the film adaptation of Michael Bond’s Paddington Bear has been moved from Christmas to  Jan. 16, but it is still set to open in the U.K. on Nov. 28 and a new trailer has been released

Official Movie Site: Paddington.com (which includes a look at Paddington as envisioned by various illustrators)

For tie-ins, check our Edelweiss collection.

Mark Rylance, who stars as Thomas Cromwell in the upcoming BBC production of Wolf Hall (recently wrapped, no U.S. release date yet), is set to play the lead in the live-action adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1982 picture book, The BFG, (Macmillan/FSG YR). To be directed by Steven Spielberg, it will be the director’s next film, according to The Hollywood Reporter, after he finishes his current project, St. James Place, an original Cold War thriller starring Tom Hanks (with Rylance in a supporting role).

This raises a question about what has happened to another Dahl adaptation, BBC One’s TV movie based on Esio Trot, starring Judi Dench and Dustin Hoffman. The Weinstein Co. acquired the U.S. rights for its fledgling TV business back in August, and no further announcements have been made. It is set for release in the U.K. in December.

The space epic, Interstellar, arrives in theaters on Nov. 7th with huge expectations (as evidenced by the Entertainment Weekly cover, right.Variety predicts that the 3-hour film will bring an opening box office of at least $50 million).

The plot has been kept under wraps, but early reports say it’s about a group of scientists who use a wormhole to travel through space in an effort to find solutions to Earth’s dwindling food supply, or, failing that, a new home for its inhabitants. Directed by Christopher Nolan, it stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and Michael Caine.

The idea for the film was inspired by the work of theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who is also an executive producer and a scientific consultant on the movie.

A short video was just released that features Thorne. He is also publishing a book, The Science of Interstellar, (W.W. Norton), set to be released on the same day as the movie, Nov 7.

Author Joan Didion’s nephew, the actor and director John Griffin Dunne, is working on a documentary about his aunt because he wants people to know that “a woman so tiny and frail is a lion. She’s a fearsome critic, essayist, a voice of moral authority and a deeply intimidating figure.”

He released the following trailer as part of his campaign for Kickstarter funding to finish the film. The L.A. Times interviews Dunne who reports that, hours after the trailer’s release yesterday, donations already totaled over half the goal of $80,000.

The first trailer has just been released for Ron Howard’s upcoming movie In the Heart of the Sea. Scheduled to arrive in theaters on March 13, it is based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s book of the same title.

Related Books

Philbrick won the 2000 National Book Award in Nonfiction for In the Heart of the Sea, about the Essex, a Nantucket ship hunting whales in the South Pacific in 1819, when it was stalked and eventually sunk by a sperm whale, setting the crew adrift for 90 days.

Philbrick also published a version for young readers, Revenge of the Whale, (Penguin/Puffin, 2004).

The movie stars Chris Hemsworth as the whaling ship Essex’s first mate Owen Chase. His account of the story, published in 1821, inspired Herman Melville (played byBen Whishaw in the movie) to write Moby Dick. Chase’s book is still available in several editions, including The Loss of the Ship Essex, Sunk by a Whale, (Penguin Classics, 2000) with an introduction by Philbrick.

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
9780143126812, 0143126814

Audio: January 27, 2015
Nathaniel Philbrick, Scott Brick
9781611763577, 1611763576

Saturday Night Live has been sending up YA film adaptations.

Last week, dystopian movies got the treatment:

The week before, it was a “grounded” YA film: