Many movie sites are trying to wrest insights from the following two and a half minutes of film footage.

Our favorite comment on the trailer comes from The Guardian: “What does the new trailer for the second Hobbit movie tell us? Mostly that Peter Jackson knows more about Middle Earth than JRR Tolkien did.”

Official Movie Site: TheHobbit.com

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug opens Dec. 13.

To tie in to the release, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is publishing a Visual Companion, a Movie Storybook, and an Official Movie Guide. HarperDesign is publishing a book by the Weta Workshop, the company that designed the movie’s special effects, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Chronicles: Art & Design

The movie Philomena, starring Judi Dench and based on The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, by U.K. journalist Martin Sixsmith (Macmillan U.K., 2009), received buzz at the Venice Film festival and is widely considered an Oscar contender. Originally set for a limited release on Christmas Day in the U.S., the date has been moved up to the day before Thanksgiving, Nov. 22, expanding to more theaters the following week. The Hollywood Reporter states that the distributor, The Weinstein Company, sees it as “potent counterprogramming to more commercial fare” such as The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

The movie, directed by Stephen Frears (The Queen), stars Dench as Philomena Lee, an Irish woman who was forced as a teenager to give her child up for adoption and Steve Coogan as the reporter who helped her rediscover him in the U.S., fifty years later.

The book, which will be published for the first time in the U.S. as a trade paperback tie-in, titled Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search  (Penguin), with a foreword by Dench, was recently reviewed in the pre pub media. It got a strong thumbs up from Kirkus (“A searingly poignant account of forced adoption and its consequences”), and the cold shoulder from LJ (“Sixsmith’s narrative, while emotionally compelling, lacks context and verges at times on the sensationalistic, with invented dialog and narration”).

Below is the latest trailer:

Jeff Bridges’ 15-year long effort to adapt Lois Lowry’s seminal YA dystopian novel, The Giver (HMH, 1993; winner of the 1994 Newbery Medal) is finally coming to fruition. A release date of Aug. 15 next year has been announced, with production  set to begin this month in Cape Town, South Africa.

Australian actor Brenton Thwaites will star as Jonas, a young boy in a utopian society that has eliminated conflict via conversion to the “Sameness.” Jonas has been selected by the Giver to become the “Receiver of Memory” who knows the truths behind the facade. Jeff Bridges will star as The Giver (a role Bridges originally envisioned for his father, Lloyd Bridges). Meryl Streep will play the Chief Elder of the community; Katie Holmes, Jonas’s mother; Alexander Skarsgard, Jonas’s father; Cameron Monaghan, Jonas’s best friend Asher; and Odeye Rush, Jonas’s friend and love interest Fiona.

Bringing new attention to the production, it was recently announced that singer Taylor Swift is also joining the cast.

Hollywood’s recent fascination with beat writer Jack Kerouac, which began with last year’s adaptation of On the Road, continues this year with two movies that portray the artist before and after he became famous.

Kerouac’s Big Sur is about his mental breakdown after the success of On the Road and his retreat to a cabin in the woods, to try to recuperate.  It is getting a big Hollywood film adaptation, starring Jean-Marc Barr as Kerouac. Kate Bosworth also stars in the film which is directed by her husband, Michael Polish.

A younger Kerouac is portrayed in Kill Your Darlings, subtitled A True Story of Obsession and Murder, which stars Daniel Radcliffe as a young Allen Ginsberg when he was a student at Columbia University. One of his classmates died mysteriously and Ginsberg, Kerouac (played by Jack Huston of Boardwalk Empire) and fellow beat writer, William Burroughs were all arrested as part of the investigation. The story inspired Burroughs and Kerouac to collaborate on a hard-boiled crime novel, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, (Grove, 2009), which was not published in their lifetimes. That doozy of a title is based on a horrible story — it seems the authors were fixated on a news report about a fire in a circus (or perhaps a zoo) that included that phrase.

The best thing that the NYT‘s Michiko Kakutani could say about the book when it was finally released, was that it gives “the reader a sense of the seedy, artsy world Kerouac and Burroughs inhabited in New York during the war years … semi-autobiographical glimpses … of the two writers before they found their voices and became bohemian brand names”

The movie is faring better, with The Telegraph stating, “Unlike Walter Salles’s recent adaptation of On The Road, which embraced the Beat philosophy with a wide and credulous grin, Kill Your Darlings is inquisitive about the movement’s worth, and the genius of its characters is never assumed.”

Big Sur — Opens wide, Nov. 1

Big Sur: (Movie Tie-In), Jack Kerouac, (Penguin, 10/9/13)

Trailer:

Kill Your Darlings — Limited Release, Oct. 16

Trailer:

Here’s an incentive to get kids to read John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, (an Oprah Book Club selection). It is set for a film adaptation by The Hunger Games team, director Gary Ross and star Jennifer Lawrence. Evidently Ross has learned how well series can work; according to Deadline, he plans to divide the story into two films.

Lawrence will play the manipulative mother of feuding twin sons, Caleb and Aron. Jo Van Fleet won an Oscar for that role in Elia Kazan’s 1955 classic adaptation. It was a supporting role, since Kazan’s version focuses on the last section of the book, in which her character is in the background. With Lawrence as star, that character will undoubtedly have a larger role.

Also in the works is a new adaptation  of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath headed by Steven Spielberg.

Cate Blanchett is set to direct her first movie, an adaptation of  The Dinner by Dutch author Herman Koch (RH/Hogarth), according to Deadline. It is unclear whether she also plans to star.

The novel, a hit in Europe, arrived in the U.S. earlier this year with a great deal of fanfare and speculation that it would be the next Gone Girl. Although it didn’t achieved that level, it sold well and was on  NYT hardcover fiction list for seven weeks, reaching a high of #7, and is likely to hit the paperback list, when the trade paperback edition is published at the end of October. Some libraries still show significant holds

A Dutch-language film adaptation, Het Diner, directed by Menno Meyjes, premiered at the 2013 Toronto Film Festival earlier this month. It  opens in the Netherlands in November; no news yet on whether it will be distributed in the U.S.

Another novel by Koch, originally published in Dutch in 2011, Summerhouse with Swimming Pool, (RH/Hogarth) will be published here in June.

The box office results for City of Bones were so poor that plans to film the sequel City of Ashes have turned into, well, ashes.

Meanwhile, expectations for the Hunger Games sequel, Catching Fire are outpacing the original. Wall Street analysts project that the film, which opens Nov. 22, will bring in $400 million in profits  vs. $325 million from the original.

It’s no surprise, then, that  announcements of new cast members for the adaptation of the third and final book in the series, Mockingjay (Scholastic), have been coming fast and furious.

For those having trouble keeping up, Entertainment Weekly offers a quick rundown of the new, as well as returning, cast members (beginning with newcomer Julianne Moore as President Alma Coin). Mockingjay will be released in two parts. The first is scheduled to arrive in theaters in Nov., 2014, followed by the second the following year.

This may be unprecedented. Two books by one author are being adapted simultaneously.

One of our favorite oddball movie sites, On Location Vacations (a handy guide for those who like to plan their vacations around movie shoots) reports that filming is set to began for the adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s third novel, Gone Girl (RH/Crown).

A new cast member was also announced today; Emily Ratajkowski, known for appearing topless in Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines music video, is set to play the college student with whom Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) has an affair. Rosamund Pike stars as Nick’s wife, Amy.

Meanwhile, filming is continuing the adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s second novel, Dark Places (RH/Crown), starring Charlize Theron. Christina Hendricks, who originally joined the cast in a supporting role as stripper Krissi Cates, now has a lead role, as the murdered mother of the main character. Former Sopranos star Drea de Matteo will now play Cates.

[Note: if you are looking for the story on Wendell Berry, the correct link is Wendell Berry Interviewed by Bill Moyers. Sorry for the incorrect link from the newsletter]

Last week, Jon Stewart featured an author each night on The Daily Show, sending their books up Amazon’s sales rankings.

Scaling back, he features just one author this week. On tonight’s show, he interviews Robert Reich whose book Aftershock is the basis for the documentary, Inequality For All. The movie was an unexpected hit at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and won a special jury prize. It was picked up for distribution by The Weinstein Co., and is being rolled out in a limited number of theaters beginning next week.

A revised tie-in edition of the book, Aftershock: (Inequality for All — Movie Tie-in Edition), (Penguin/Viking) will be published next week.

Winter’s Tale, based on Mark Helprin’s 1983 novel has been set for release on Valentine’s Day next year. It stars Colin Farrell, William Hurt, Russell Crowe, Will Smith, Jennifer Connelly and Eva Marie Saint. The trailer hasn’t been released yet, but a series of stills from the set are available here.

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.

The novel is complicated, with elements of magical realism, time travel and science fiction. The NYT book reviewer, ater several paragraphs trying to describe the book, finally despaired, saying, “We’re now scarcely more than a tenth of our way through Winter’s Tale, and my plot summary is a tissue of (to me) painful omissions.” He also despaired of doing the writing justice, saying he found himself, “nervous, to a degree I don’t recall in my past as a reviewer, about failing the work, inadequately displaying its brilliance . . . Not for some time have I read a work as funny, thoughtful, passionate or large-souled. Rightly used, it could inspire as well as comfort us. Winter’s Tale is a great gift at an hour of great need.”

Warner Bros. describes it simply as “a story of miracles, crossed destinies, and the age-old battle between good and evil.”

Three other movies based on books will open on that day, Endless Love, based on the 1979 novel by Scott Spencer, The Maze Runner,  based on the YA novel by James Dashner and Vampire Academy: Blood Sisters based on the first in a series of six YA novels by Richelle Mead.

The film adaptation of the best-selling nonfiction title The Lost City of Z (RH/Doubleday, 2009) has been in limbo for several years. Rights were acquired shortly after the book was published, with James Gray set to direct, Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B overseeing the project and expectations that Pitt would star. In late 2010, however, it was abandoned and Pitt left to take the lead in the film Killing them Softly (based on the book Cogan’s Trade, by George V. Higgins).

But now it appears the project is being resuscitated. Benedict Cumberbatch is in negotiations to star, according to Deadline, with James Gray still directing and Plan B still producing.

The book grew out of a New Yorker article by David Grann, (Doubleday, Feb, 2009), about British explorer, Percy Fawcett, who disappeared int the Amazon in 1935, during an attempt to prove his claim that a highly sophisticated city, which he called the City of Z, was hidden in the jungle. At the time it was published, the NYT critic Michiko Kakutani gave it a rare rave, “at once a biography, a detective story and a wonderfully vivid piece of travel writing that combines Bruce Chatwinesque powers of observation with a Waugh-like sense of the absurd,” adding, “it reads with all the pace and excitement of a movie thriller and all the verisimilitude and detail of firsthand reportage.” It ended up topping most of the year’s best books lists.

The first image has just been released for the big screen adaptation of Suite Francaise, (RH/Knopf), which has finished filming in France and Belgium. Irène Némirovsky’s book, on which it is based, became a surprise hit when it was published in 2004, more than 60 years after the author’s death in Auschwitz.

The photo shows Michelle Williams as Lucile, from the second novella in the book Dolce. While her husband is in a WWII German prisoner of war camp, she is living with her mother-in-law in rural France. Behind her is Matthias Schoenaerts as the German officer who occupies their house.

The Weinstein Co. bought the U.S. distribution rights in April. It is expected to be released next year, but no specific date has been annnounced.

Directed by Saul Dibb, the film also stars Kristin Scott Thomas, Sam Riley and Ruth Wilson.

The debut word-of-mouth best seller, The Light Between Oceans, by M.L. Stedman (S&S/Scribner; Thorndike), first spotted by librarians at last year’s BEA Shout ‘n’ Share panel, went on to become a best seller in hardcover and continue in trade paperback, at #14 after 21 weeks and is a reading group staple.

DreamWorks acquired the film rights and has just named Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines) as the director according to Deadline.

The book trailer outlines the story:

The 2010 surprise best seller, Room by Irish/Canadian author Emma Donoghue (Hachette/Little,Brown), is being adapted as a film, with the book’s author writing the script and Lenny Abrahamson directing, reports Deadline.

The novel features a story that has become familiar from news stories; a woman is kidnapped and forced to live in a small shed. In this case, the woman has a son who she tries to protect from the truth. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was featured on the majority of the best books lists for that year.

The movie Philomena, based on The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, by UK journalist Martin Sixsmith (Macmillan U.K., 2009), received such great buzz at the Venice Film festival that the Weinstein Co., which has U.S. distribution rights, quickly  set a limited release date of this Christmas, qualifying it and star Judi Dench for Oscar nominations, followed by a wider release in January.

The book recounts Sixsmith’s efforts to help a woman find the son she had  been forced to give up for adoption fifty years earlier. The movie, directed by Stephen Frears (The Queen), stars Dench as the mother, Philomena Lee and Steve Coogan as Sixsmith. 

The book will be published here in September as a trade paperback tie-in, titled Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search  (Penguin), with a foreword by Dench. UPDATE: both the movie release and the pub date for the tie-in has been moved to 11/27/13.