Last year’s word-of-mouth debut phenomenon Wonder, R.J. Palacio, (RH/ Knopf Young Readers; Brilliance Audio), which is still a #1 NYT best seller after 23 weeks, is being adapted by Lionsgate, reports Deadline.

Hired as the screenwriter is Jack Thorne, whose credits include How I Live Now, based on the novel by Meg Rosoff, currently in pre-production and an episode of the MTV series, Skins.

Somebody must like it. The movie adaptation of The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones doesn’t arrive in theaters until August 23, but the team behind it is planning on a rematch of stars Lily Collins and Jamie Campbell Bower in the sequel, The Mortal Instruments: City Of Ashes, with production set to begin this fall.

There’s plenty more material. Cassandra Clare’s series consists of six books (the final one arrives next March), as well as a 3-part prequel series, Infernal Devices, which just concluded with Clockwork Princess, (S&S/ Margaret K. McElderry, 3/19/3). That’s not all, the author has announced a new series of sequels, called The Dark Artifices, to begin in 2015.

Tom Hanks’ next movie role is based on Captain Richard Phillips’ memoir, A Captain’s Duty, about the 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates of the unarmed merchant marine ship he commanded. Phillips became a national hero by courageously leading his crew to safety.

Titled Captain Phillips, it is directed by Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum, The Bourne Supremecy), and is coming to theaters on Oct 11.

Official Site: CaptainPhillipsMovie.com

The book was heavily covered in the media when it came was first published in 2010 (see the real Captain Phillips on Dateline and on The Daily Show). A tie-in will be published on Sept. 24 (Hyperion).

Leading up to the release of Baz Luhrmann’s interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, some are debating whether the book lives up to its name.

Not buying it:

New York Magazine, “Why I Despise The Great Gatsby”

Great:

USA Today, “Five reasons Gatsby is the great American novel”

The Guardian, “What makes The Great Gatsby great?”

The Washington Post, “In defense of The Great Gatsby“

The first trailer for the adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s Sci Fi novel, Ender’s Game, debuted online today. The movie debuts on Nov. 1 and stars:

Harrison Ford … Colonel Hyrum Graff
Abigail Breslin …Valentine Wiggin
Ben Kingsley … Mazer Rackham
Asa Butterfield … Ender Wiggin
Han Soto … Colonel Graff’s aide
Hailee Steinfeld … Petra Arkanian
Viola Davis … Major Gwen Anderson

The tie-ins are  releasing today:

Ender’s Game MTI (Ender Wiggins Quartet) Orson Scott Card Retail Price: $9.99 Paperback: 368 pages Publisher: Tor Teen – (2013-05-07) ISBN / EAN: 0765337541 / 9780765337542

Other Available Formats:

Audio ISBN: 9781427205261

Audio ISBN: 9781593974749

Audio ISBN: 9781427235398

Trade Paperback ISBN: 9780765337320

It seems everyone is talking about The Great Gatsby. Stephen Colbert goes a step further, creating a Gatsby book club. Jennifer Egan will lead the book discussion on Thursday, followed by a chat with Baz Luhrmann, whose adaptation opens the next day (a private screening was held in NYC on Sunday).

Steven Spielberg announced in January that he had abandoned plans to adapt Daniel H. Wilson’s Robopocalypse (RH/Doubleday; BOT), which had been set for release next year, starring Chris Hemsworth, Anne Hathaway and Ben Whishaw.

Yesterday, he cleared up speculation about what he will turn to next and announced plans to direct an adaptation of American Sniper (HarperCollins/Morrow), the best selling memoir by Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, who was killed on a Texas shooting range in February.

Bradley Cooper, who bought the rights to the book a year ago, will star.

Before he died, Kyle had a second book int the works, Gun: A History of the U.S. in Ten Firearms, (HarperCollins/Morrow; HarperAudio). It is being released, as planned, in early June.

We thought that the poor box office showing for the adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (Hachette/Grand Central, 2012) had finally killed off thoughts of a film based on the grandmother of the mashup genre, Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, also by Grahame-Smith (Quirk Books), but The Hollywood Reporter announces that Lily Collins is now set to star with Burt Steers directing.

Collins follows a string of actresses that have been rumored or announced for the role (Natalie Portman — who is still attached as a producer —  Emma Stone, Anne Hathaway, Scarlett Johansson, Mia Wasikowska and Rooney Mara). Steers is the fourth director attached to the project.

The mashup craze seems to have run its course, but zombies still live.

Another project announced in 2010, an HBO series based on Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Olive Kitteridge (Random House) is now gearing up. Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right) has been signed to direct with Frances McDormand and Richard Jenkins starring. Tom Hanks’ Playtone Partners is co-producing with McDormand’s company. According to Deadline, “Getting this cast, director and a four-hour commitment from HBO is a real testament for McDormand … [who] fell in love with the book before it won the Pulitzer…[and] bought it with her own money.”

Strout’s The Burgess Boys (Random House), her first novel since Kitteridge, was published in March. McDormand’s first production effort, an adaptation of Laura Lippman’s Every Secret Thing, is currently filming.

Back in 2010, when Bernard Cornwell’s bestselling novel, Agincourt (Harper, 2009), about the battle that was also the basis for Shakespeare’s Henry V, was signed for a film, we warned you not to hold your breath. Filmmaker Michael Mann had several other projects in the works. Since then, he has completed two TV series for HBO (Luck and the documentary Witness).

Agincourt is now back in the news; Deadline reports that the script is being rewritten. There is some excitement about Mann’s renewed interest based on his handling of 1992’s The Last of the Mohicans, starring Daniel Day-Lewis (Roger Ebert called it,  “quite an improvement on Cooper’s all but unreadable book”). One more  project stands in the way, however. Mann begins production in June on another feature film.

The Zookeeper’s Wife, (Norton, 2007) by Diane Ackerman is the true story about the director of the Warsaw Zoo during WWII, who, with his wife, managed to rescue over 300 Jews from the Nazis. Film rights were signed in 2011.

The adaptation is now moving forward, with actress Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty) signed to star and Niki Caro to direct, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Disney’s live-action movie based on Judith Viorst’s 1972 hit children’s Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Atheneum) is making baby steps closer to the screen.  Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right) is directing, Steve Carrell is set to star as Alexander’s father, and The Hollywood Reporter writes that Jennifer Garner is in talks to join the cast as the mother.

Production is set to begin this fall.

It seems that some in Hollywood who should know better have claimed that Alex Pettyfer has been signed to play Christian Grey in the film adaptation of E.L. James’ Fifty Shades Of Grey.

Deadline says it isn’t so. Is anything happening? Deadline states that, “A lot of major directors have been discreetly approached, but everyone is waiting on a script by Kelly Marcel. They would not set any cast without input from a filmmaker.”

Movie rights for Kristin Cashore’s YA fantasy  Graceling (Harcourt) have been optioned, with an eye towards a “potential franchise,” according to Variety. Producer Deepak Nayar, who is also producing Vampire Academy: Blood Sisters, an adaptation of the first in a series by Richelle Mead which begins filming next month, notes that Graceling “combines elements of Hunger Games and Game of Thrones.”

The first volume in the series came out in 2008, the same year as The Hunger Games. It was followed by  Fire (Penguin/Dial, 2009), which the author describes as a “stand-alone prequel-ish companion book,”  and another companion focusing on a different character introduced the first book, Bitterblue (Penguin/Dial, 2012).

The first trailer for the first film adaptation of a book by Judy Blume, Tiger Eyes, just debuted online. Directed by the author’s son, Lawrence Blume, it arrives in theaters and on VOD on June 7. It stars Willa Holland as Davey, Amy Jo Johnson (former Felicity star), as Davey’s mom, Cynthia Stevenson as Bitsy and Tatanka Means (The Host) as Wolf and was named Best Feature Film at the Palm Beach International Film Festival this month

Blume talked about the movie on NBC’s Rock Center in March in an inteview with Chelsea Clinton.

Official Web Site: TigerEyesMovie.com