Director David Fincher (The Social Network, Fight Club, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) is known for getting strong performances out of actors. He will have his work cut out for him if Ben Affleck takes on the lead in his adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.

Affleck is currently in negotiations for the role, reports Deadline, also noting that, if he takes it, his work on directing the adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Live by Night will be delayed.

Reese Witherspoon is one of the  producers for Gone Girl, but, says Deadline, she is not expected to star.

Martin Sheen (West Wing) and Rooney Mara (the English-language version of  The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) are set to star in the adaptation of Andy Mulligan’s 2010 YA novel, Trash (RH/David Fickling).

The book received strong reviews and was on several state awards list that year. Horn Book described it as, “Treasure Island meets Slumdog Millionaire in a rousing and hugely entertaining adventure set in an unnamed third-world country in the not-too-distant future. Fourteen-year-old Raphael Fernandez and his friend Gardo are ‘trash boys’ in rubbish-town, picking through ‘one whole long world of steaming trash,’ never finding anything of interest or value…until one day they do…”

Production is scheduled to begin in Rio de Janeiro early next month, with release scheduled for May next year.

It’s been delayed so many times (from Feb. to Oct. 2013 and then to January next year UPDATE: Delayed again! As of 11/27/13, the new date is 2/6/15 — Variety) that some have wondered if The Seventh Son will ever make it to the theaters, but the release of the first trailer gives new hope.

The movie, based on The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch by Joseph Delaney (HarperCollins/Greenwillow, 2005), stars Julianne Moore as Mother Malkin, “the most evil witch in the world,” Jeff Bridges as the mentor to a young apprentice played by Ben Barnes and is set in the 1700′s.

The next book in the series, the twelfth, The Last Apprentice: I Am Alice, will be released on Sept. 3 of this year.

Series Web site: LastApprenticeBooks.com

True to form, Bridges gets the final, and best, line of the trailer.

Don’t withdraw those copies yet!

As Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken (Random House, 2010) continues to be a best seller (on the NYT Nonfiction list at #8 after 135 weeks), it was just announced that the film adaptation, to be directed by Angelina Jolie, will be released 12/25/14. Production is set to begin in late September (the New York Daily News reports Jolie is scouting locations in Hawaii).

In a statement, the director said about the 96 year-old man who is the focus of the book, “I’ve had the privilege of spending a great deal of time with Louie Zamperini, who is a hero of mine, and now—I am proud to say—a dear friend. I am deeply honored to be telling his extraordinary story, and I will do my absolute best to give him the film he deserves.”

A film about Zamperini was the works long before Hillenbrand began working on her book or Jolie thought about adapting it. Universal bought Zamperini’s “life rights” in the 1950′s, with plans to star Tony Curtis, which were never realized.

Scottish actor Sam Heughan has  officially been cast as Jamie Fraser, the male lead in the upcoming Outlander series on cable network STARZ, based on Diana Gabaldon’s novels. The news was leaked via Twitter last week.

Outlander begins shooting this fall in Scotland and is expected to debut on STARZ next spring, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The next title in the series, Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, has been moved from a December publication date to March 25, 2014, when it will tie in to the publicity for the STARZ series.

The first official trailer for Austenland, produced by Twilight author Stephenie Meyer, was just released online, only a month before the movie begins a limited run in New York and Los Angeles on Aug. 16.

Based on Shannon Hale’s first adult novel Austenland, (Bloomsbury USA, 2007; a sequel, Midnight in Austenland, was published last year), it stars Keri Russell as a Jane Austen fan who tries to overcome her debilitating infatuation with Mr. Darcy (specifically, Colin Firth’s version in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice) by going to “the world’s only immersive Austen experience,” run by Jane Seymour. Jennifer Coolidge provides ample comic relief in some astounding costumes.

The trade paperback tie-in was released last week.

Disney’s live-action movie based on Judith Viorst’s 1972 hit children’s book  Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Atheneum) is moving closer to the screen.  Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right) is directing.  Ed Oxenbould will play Alexander,  Steve Carrell his father, Jennifer Garner his mother. Deadline reports that Dylan Minnette will play the older brother and Kerris Dorsey his sister.

[Note: our earlier story has been corrected; thanks to the reader who caught our error.]

The movie is currently scheduled for release on Oct. 10, 2014.

The beloved 1990 children’s book Esio Trot by Roald Dahl (Penguin) is about a shy old man who hatches a complicated plot to win over the heart of the woman he loves by helping her tiny pet tortoise grow into a larger, more dignified animal. His scheme  involves  an incantation that begins with the backwards spelling of tortoise, Esio Trot.

Production is set to begin for an adaptation of the book, reports the movie news site, Showbiz411, starring Dustin Hoffman and Dame Judi Dench, lead by Irish director Dearbhla Walsh.

Who would guess that a movie called The Family starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer about a Brooklyn Mob family in the witness protection program, is based on a French novel, a black comedy called Malavita (or “underworld,” the name of the family dog)?

The trailer for this cultural mashup was recently released. The movie is scheduled for September 20.

The book by Tonino Benacquista, a 2004 French best seller, makes its first appearance in the U.S. today as an original trade paperback (Penguin).

It appears that the rumors of Tim Burton directing Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children were true; Fox recently announced a release date, with Burton’s name attached to direct.

It will be a while, however, it’s scheduled for July 31, 2015.

The sequel to the novel will arrive sooner. Hollow City: The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine’s Children (Quirk Books; AudioGo) is scheduled for release in January next year.

Burton is now at work on a biopic about painter Margaret Keane, whose kitschy portraits of kids with enormous eyes were popular in the ’60’s. It’s being called, of course, Big Eyes.

The first trailer for the biopic JOBS, starring Ashton Kutcher was just released. Originally scheduled for April, it is now opening on Aug. 16. In addition to Kutcher as Steve Jobs, it stars Dermot Mulroney (as Mike Markkula, who supplied key funding for Apple’s startup), Josh Gad (Steve Wozniak), and Matthew Modine (John Scully).

Even though it’s likely to bring renewed attention to Walter Isaacson’s best selling bio, Steve Jobs (S&S), it is not based on it or any other book. At one time there were two Jobs biopics in development. Sony was working on an adaptation of the book, with Aaron Sorkin writing the script. No news has emerged about that project since Sorkin mentioned it briefly in January. Last week, he told Vanity Fair that he is at work on a Broadway play but made no mention of the film.

Isaacson’s book will be released in paperback on Sept. 9, nearly two years after the hardcover. It featured an image of the older Jobs, the paperback uses a photo of him as a young man, looking so much like Kutcher that some might confuse it for a tie-in.

Which is better, the book or the movie? That question takes on new intensity with the opening today of World War Z, starring Brad Pitt and based on the long-running best seller by Max Brooks. The author himself has said that the only thing the movie shares with book is the title, since it completely abandons the beloved faux-oral history style of the novel.

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Disappointed fans can console themselves with a new audio version, released as a movie tie-in, but much more true to the book. Five hours longer than the original 2006 edition, it is titled World War Z: The Complete Edition and features dozens of new narrators, including director Martin Scorsese, Spiderman star Alfred Molina, The Walking Dead creator Frank Darabont, rapper Common, Firefly star Nathan Fillion, and  Shaun of the Dead’s Simon Pegg, with Brooks serving as The Interviewer as he did in the first audio edition (more details are on the author’s web site).

Calling her a “surprise choice,” Deadline announces that Sam Taylor-Johnson has signed on to direct a film based on the mega bestseller, Fifty Shades of Grey, saying, “In addition to [her directorial debut, a movie about the early life of John Lennon] Nowhere Boy, which garnered her a pair of BAFTA nominations … she had only directed the short film Love You More which was in Cannes in 2008.” The article  notes that she is also developing a film based on Robert Goolrick’s A Reliable Wife.

No cast has been announced.

Friday’s issue of Entertainment Weekly offers a “first look” at the movie Divergent,  based on Veronica Roth’s dystopian YA best-seller, the first in a series.

The cover asks the question that’s preoccupying Hollywood, “Is This the Next Hunger Games?” (we’ll have to wait for the issue to see if they offer an answer). There will be a longer wait for the ultimate answer; the movie won’t be released until March 21, 2014.

What is not in question is that the female lead, Shailene Woodley, is a rising star, so hot that she has been cast to star in the adaptation of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars.

Before the public sees her in either, they will see her in another YA adaptation, The Spectacular Now, opening August 2.

A favorite at the Sundance Film Festival, it is based on the 2008 National Book Award finalist by Tim Tharp, (RH/Knopf Books for Young Readers; Brilliance Audio).

The film also stars Miles Teller (who won kudos for his role in the remake of Footloose) and Jennifer Jason Leigh and is directed by James Ponsoldt.

The paperback tie-in releases on July 9 (Random House/Ember).

Work on the pilot for a possible HBO TV series based on Tom Perrotta’s best selling 2011 novel The Leftovers, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s) is ramping up. Deadline reports that Liv Tyler is joining the cast to play Meg, whose relationship with Laurie Garvey, not yet cast, is pivotal to the book. Justin Theroux was cast earlier to play Laurie’s husband and town mayor, Kevin.