Deadline announces that Bill Murray has joined the cast of the HBO series based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel Olive Kitteridge (Random House) by Elizabeth Strout. His role is unspecified. UPDATE: Word and Film reports that he will play Jack Kennison, a widower befriended by Olive.

Filming began in Massachusetts in October. The book is set in Maine, but Massachusetts may have been chosen for its favorable tax incentives to filmmakers.

Directed by Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right), with Tom Hanks and Frances McDormand producing, the following roles have already been cast:

Frances McDormand … Olive Kitteridge
Richard Jenkins … Henry Kitteridge (Olive’s husband)
John Gallagher Jr. … Christopher Kitteridge, (Olive and Henry’s son)
Cory Michael Smith … Kevin Coulson, (Olive’s former student)
Zoe Kazan … Denise Thibodeau, (works with Henry at the pharmacy)
Brady Corbet … Henry Thibodeau, (married to Denise)
Rosemarie DeWitt … Rachel Coulson

In case you missed the livestream of the L.A. premiere of Catching Fire, you can watch it below. It seems that Hutcherson’s pronunciation of Peetniss, the fan name for Peeta/Katniss, got nearly as much attention as Jennifer Lawrence’s dress.

The stars return to NYC today to continue the promotional tour for the movie which opens this Friday. Lawrence appears on the Daily Show tomorrow and on Letterman tonight.

Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins, (Harper, 2012) appeared on most of the best books lists last year. The audio was also picked as one of the year’s best and a film is in the works.

Imogen Poots has signed on to star, reports Deadline. Directed by Todd Field, who won acclaim for the film version of Tom Perotta’s Little Children, production is set to begin in Italy in May. Author Walter and director Field are co-writing the screenplay.

Currently filming in London, the live-action film Paddington “inspired by” the classic children’s book series, which began with the 1958 A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond (50th anniversary edition published here by HMH in 2008), has been announced for release on Dec. 12 next year.

The computer-generated Paddington is voiced by Colin Firth. Featured in live roles are Nicole Kidman, Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Jim Broadbent, Peter Capaldi, and Julie Walters. Directed by Paul Smith, it is being produced by David Heyman, who also produced Gravity and Harry Potter.

The two stars are featured on the cover of the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, but the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey has been delayed.

Rather than releasing this coming August, it has been moved to February 2015 (ugh; are they thinking “perfect date movie”?).

Looks like you can go ahead and weed those copies.

The first “official trailer” for the film adaptation of Veronica Roth’s YA novel Divergent was released at a live event on studio Summit’s YouTube channel yesterday. While remarkably similar to the “exclusive first look” trailer shown during the MTV Video awards in August, this one adds several new scenes.The movie releases on March 21.

Summit has also released is a featurette, “Factions,” that explains an important element of the story.

The tie-in editions will be published in February:

Divergent Movie Tie-in Edition
Veronica Roth
HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books
On Sale Date: February 11, 2014
Hardcover: 9780062289841, 0062289845
$17.99 US / $21.00 Can.

Paperback: 9780062289858, 0062289853
$9.99 US / $11.99 Can

As part of the full-court press to promote Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks, “based on the untold true story” of the making of  the movie, Mary Poppins, a video has been released with commentary by Tom Hanks, who plays Walt Disney, and Emma Thomspon, who plays PL Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, the book.

This is the first time that the iconic Disney has been portrayed in a movie. Since the studio behind it is the one that bears his name, that leads to the question posed by BuzzFeed, “Did Disney Make An Honest Movie About Walt Disney?”

As they point out,  the movie had to be made with Disney, a company notoriously fanatic about controlling rights. Any other studio would have had to figure out how to make a movie about Mary Poppins, without using images or music from the film. Says BuzzFeed,

Consider the irony here: If [scriptwriter Kelly] Marcel wanted to see her work on the big screen, she had to sell Disney her movie about an author who didn’t want to sell her book to Disney … In a way, it was just as Travers predicted: Mary Poppins became a property of Disney, even if she created the character.

BuzzFeed goes on to applaud the movie for being honest about Disney’s vices; he drank and smoked three packs a day and eventually died of lung cancer.

What they don’t mention is that, as Caitlin Flanagan wrote in “Becoming Mary Poppins,” published in the New Yorker in 2005, far from the movie’s portrayal of Disney using his personal charm to woo Travers, the real-life person didn’t even meet with her at first. Instead, he left town, palming her off on the two songwriters he had hired for an agonizing, week-long story meeting.

When Travers confronted Disney after the movie’s premiere, to which she hadn’t even been invited, and demanded some changes, says Flanagan,

Disney looked at her coolly. “Pamela,” he replied, “the ship has sailed.” And then he strode past her, toward a throng of well-wishers, and left her alone, an aging woman in a satin gown and evening gloves, who had travelled more than five thousand miles to attend a party where she was not wanted.

That hardly sounds like the warm-hearted conclusion promised in previews.

The movie arrives in selected theaters on Dec. 13, rolling out nationwide on Dec. 20.

The tie-in is a re-release of a biography of Travers, published in Australia in 1999 and released here in 2006, Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P. L. Travers, by Valerie Lawson (S&S).

Lawson is quoted in Entertainment Weekly’s 11/15 “Holiday Movie Preview” issue, describing how Travers felt about the movie, “She’d written Mary Poppins as a way of healing the wounds of her own childhood, so to have [the character] turned into someone rather more sprightly and cheerful than she desired was very difficult.”

Official Movie Site: Movies.Disney.com/Saving-Mr-Banks

The biggest film adaptation opening tomorrow is based on comics characters. Thor: The Dark World, is the second movie in the series based on Marvel comics by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby. Reviews of the film are not kind, with USA Today saying, “Unlike Iron Man and Captain America, Thor is too dull a character to pin a franchise on, though Chris Hemsworth certainly looks the part and the production design is striking,” but one writer begs to differ.

Tie-in: Marvel’s Thor: The Dark World Prelude. Also available is a collection of the original comics, The Mighty Thor Omnibus, Vol 2.

YA Adaptations 

The adaptation of Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief debuts in a very limited Oscar-qualifying release, just four screens, with plans to roll it out more widely. How widely depends on whether it gets Oscar nods. Early reviews, which  repeatedl yuse the lackluster term “earnest,” don’t bode well. The Forbes reviewer notes that it is based on a “somewhat popular novel” (guess 230 weeks on the NYT best seller fails to impress him). He’s also not impressed by the star power of Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson, and newcomer Sophie Nélisse as Liesel. The movie did, however, win over fellow YA novelist John Green and has brought new readers to the book, which has been moving up the USA Today best seller list to #15 as of the 11/7 list, its highest spot to date.
Showtimes. Tie in: The Book Thief , (RH/Knopf YR)

In a less limited opening (over 60 theaters, as well as VOD), How I Live Now, starring Saoirse Ronan, is the adaptation of Meg Rosoff’s debut novel, a Printz Award winner published in 2004. Ronan is getting strong reviews for her performance.
Showtimes. Tie-in: How I Live Now, (RH/Ember).

A Classic and a Modern Story

Also opening in a limited number of theaters is  Great Expectations, directed by Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), starring Helena Bonham Carter as Miss Havisham and Ralph Fiennes as Magwitch. Although Charles Dickens’ book has been adapted before (a two-part series aired just last year on PBS Masterpiece) both the trailer and reviews indicate this is a different take on the story.
Showtimes. Tie-in: Great Expectations: (Movie Tie-In)  

The indie movie, The Motel Life is the directorial debut of brothers Alan Polsky and Gabe Polsky. Fittingly, it is based on a novel about two brothers by Willy Vlautin. It stars Emile Hirsch, Stephen Dorff, Dakota Fanning, and Kris Kristofferson
Showtimes. Tie-in: The Motel Life Movie Tie-in Edition, (HarperPerennial).

To view the trailers of these and other upcoming film adaptations, click on links at right, under Movies & TV Based on Books — Trailers.

With the tagline, “This Valentine’s Day Believe in Miracles,” the first trailer for Winter’s Tale, based on Mark Helprin’s 1983 novel has just been released.

It stars Colin Farrell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Russell Crowe, William Hurt, Will Smith, Jennifer Connelly and Eva Marie Saint. The film’s director, Akiva Goldsman, worked for years to get financing for the movie. Shooting finally started last year, only to be delayed by Hurricane Sandy.

Official Site: WintersTaleMovie.com

A trade paperback movie tie-in edition arrives in January:
Winter’s Tale (Movie Tie-In Edition)
Mark Helprin
HMH/Mariner
On Sale Date: January 7, 2014

Trailer, below.

A new, much longer trailer for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the second in the film trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkein’s novel, was revealed at a fan event Monday night.

The film arrives on Dec. 13. The third in the trilogy, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, will be released on Dec. 17, 2014.

Fans at the event also saw 20 minutes of “never before seen footage” from the film (IGN breaks it down here).

The film adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Live By Night, directed by Ben Affleck, will be released on Christmas Day, 2015. Affleck will star; no other stars have been announced.

Affleck’s first outing as a director was a film based on another Lehane novel, 2007’s Gone Baby Gone.

Live by Night (Harper/ Morrow) is a crime novel set in the Prohibition era about the rise of an Irish-American gangster. Prophetically, Entertainment Weekly, called it a “ripping, movie-ready yarn that jumps from a Boston prison to Tampa speakeasies to a Cuban tobacco farm.”

Affleck is currently at work as an actor, playing the lead in David Fincher’s adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, set for release on Oct 3, 2014.

Lehane is no stranger to the movies; in addition to Gone Baby Gone, films have been made of his novels Mystic River (2003) and Shutter Island (2010). He has also written for the TV series The Wire and Boardwalk Empire.

Kate Winslet, featured on the cover of the current issue of Vogue, stars in the upcoming adaptation of Joyce Maynard’s 2009 novel, Labor Day (HarperCollins/Morrow). Josh Brolin also stars, as a convict who manages to persuade Winslet as Adele to take him in. Winslet talked about the role in an interview in yesterdays New York Times.

The trailer has just been released. The movie arrives in theaters in a limited run on December 25, followed by a wider release on January 31.

This is the second book by Maynard to be made into a movie. To Die For, starring Nicole Kidman, was released in 1995.

The tie-in will be released (cover, above, ruth) on Dec. 13.

Below is the trailer. The official movie site is LaborDayMovie.com.

After no news for two years, it appears that the adaptation of the comic novel, The Family Fang, by Kevin Wilson (HarperCollins/Ecco, 2011) is moving forward.

Nicole Kidman optioned it a couple of months after it was published, with plans to star. The Playlist just announced that she has hired Jason Bateman as the film’s director. Better known as an actor, Bateman made his debut as a director with Bad Words, which was shown at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

For those unfamiliar with the book, it has nothing to do with vampires, but with a quirky family of performance artists. The book received strong reviews when it was published, including Maureen Corrigan who was a fan,

…it’s such a minty fresh delight to open up Kevin Wilson’s debut novel, The Family Fang, and feel the revitalizing blast of original thought, robust invention, screwball giddiness. Every copy of The Family Fang sold in August should have a sticker on it imprinted with the life-giving invitation that used to be issued on movie marquees in summertime during the dawn of the air-conditioning age: ‘Come on in! It’s cooool inside!’

The biggest opening for a film adaptation this weekend is Ender’s Game, starring Harrison ford and Asa Butterfield. Based on Orson Card Scott’s 1985 SF novel, it opened in some theaters last night. The E! Online news site reports that forecasters expect it to finish the weekend at #1, despite a threatened boycott. The mass market edition has been NYT best seller list for 54 weeks. UPDATE: Entertainment Weekly examines the question, “Is Ender’s Game the next big YA franchise? Or is it The Golden Compass?” (they come down on the side of the latter).

Opening in more limited runs are Big Sur based on Jack Kerouac’s 1962 novel and Diana, the biopic featuring Naomi Watts, based on Diana; Her Last Love, by Kate Snell, released here for the fist time as a tie-in last month. The film got a sour reception in the U.K. where it opened last month (it has a positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes of only 9%).

To see trailers of these and other upcoming film adaptations, click on links at right, under Movies & TV Based on Books — Trailers.

Tie-ins Releasing Next Week

Many Oscar hopefuls begin debuts this month (as USA Today puts it, this is the time when “Hollywood trims the turkeys for awards season“). Three of the tie-ins releasing next week are for movies considered to be strong contenders.

August: Osage County, Tracy Letts, (Perseus/Theatre Communications Group)

Based on the Pulitzer-winning play, the movie opens Dec. 25 and stars Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, Juliette Lewis and the actor-of-the-moment, Benedict Cumberbatch.

Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search (Movie Tie-in) , by Martin Sixsmith, intro. by Judi Dench, (Penguin; this is the book’s first release in the U.S.)

Judi Dench is considered a shoe-in for an Oscar nomination for her performance as a woman searching for the son she was forced to give up fifty years before. It’s directed by Stephen Frears (The Queen) and opens in an Oscar-qualifying limited run on Nov. 22.

The Sting Man: Inside Abscam, Robert W. Greene,

Based on the true story of  the ABSCAM sting of the late 1970′s and ’80′s, the movie, titled American Hustle, stars Christian Bale as a con artist recruited for sting operation led by a federal agent (Bradley Cooper). It also stars Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence and Jeremy Renner. Directed by David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook which also featured Cooper and Lawrence), it opens Dec. 18 (after a limited opening on Dec. 13). The book is a paperback re-release of a 1981 title. The cover blurb reads, “The true story behind the film American Hustle.”

Others:

The Hobbit: Movie Tie-in, Tolkien, J.R.R., (HMH/Mariner)

Probably the biggest release of the year, nonetheless, the second of the Hobbit movies is not on Oscar lists. It opens Dec. 12.

The Motel Life Movie Tie-in Edition, Willy Vlautin, (Harper Perennial)

Starring, Emile Hirsch, Stephen Dorff, Dakota Fanning, Kris Kristofferson, this is based on  Willy Vlautin’s debut novel.  Opens next week, Nov. 8.

The movie adaptation of Gayle Forman’s 2009 best selling YA title, If I Stay, (Penguin), began production in Vancouver, B.C. this week. The author has been  tweeting her excitement from the set (“Today’s embarrassing #IfIStayMovie Moment: I see Mia’s family house for first time, burst into tears. This makes director @rjcutler happy.”)

The film stars Choe Moretz as Mia (currently as the lead in the movie Carrie); Jamie Blackley (Snow White And The Huntsman, The Fifth Estate) as Adam, the male lead; Mirella Enos as Kat, Mia’s mother; Joshua Leonard as Denny Hall, Mia’s father and Stacy Keach as Gramps. Director R. J Cutler,  is known for his documentaries, including the Emmy-award-winning American High.

Photos from the set have been posted on Examiner.com and  GossipCenter.com.