The Oprah Book Club 2.0 pick, Wild (RH/Knopf) by Cheryl Strayed (pictured, right) is headed for Hollywood. Film rights have been acquired by Reese Witherspoon’s production company, with plans for the actress to star. Deadline just announced that author Nick Hornby has been tapped to write the script

Witherspoon has several other book-related projects in the pipeline:

• Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl (RH/Crown).
  Withersppon is producing (The Hollywood Reporter features the author and actress together in an issue on “power authors“).
• Mara Leveritt, Devil’s Knot:The True Story of the West Memphis Three (S&S/Atria).
  Witherspoon to star with Colin Firth.
• John Gray, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus (HarperCollins).
  Witherspoon signed to star; may begin shooting in January (Deadline, 6/21/12).
• Mitch Larson, Pennyroyal’s Princess Boot Camp (children’s title, to be published by Putnam; no release date set).
  Rights acquired (Deadline, 3/21/12).

You might not guess it from the trailer, but the new Brad Pitt movie, Killing Them Softly, opening this Friday, is based on George V. Higgins’ Cogan’s Trade, published in 1974.

Several of the reviews, however, note the connection. Reviewer David Edelstein comments in New York magazine, “Everything in Killing Them Softly that springs from George V. Higgins’s 1974 crime novel Cogan’s Trade is very fine: grimly amusing then shockingly brutal.”

In the New Yorker, Anthony Lane devotes half his review to Higgins, wondering why there aren’t more movies based on his books, calling them “a trove, begging to be raided for linguistic loot. If you want to grade postwar novelists on the strength of their ears alone—how fast they prick up at the crackle and blare of American speech—then Higgins and Elmore Leonard, you could argue, lead the pack, ahead of more distinguished names.”

If the reviewers have their say, the movie would bring a renaissance of interest in Higgins, which makes it fortunate that Random House’s Vintage/Lizard imprint recently re-released several of the author’s 25 novels (in print and ebooks, available on OverDrive), including Cogan’s Trade.

Cogan’s Trade (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) George V. Higgins Retail Price: $14.95 Paperback: 224 pages Publisher: Vintage – (2011-11-01) ISBN / EAN: 030794722X / 9780307947222

The tie-in uses the movie title.

Killing Them Softly (Cogan’s Trade Movie Tie-in Edition) George V. Higgins Retail Price: $14.95 Paperback: 224 pages Publisher: Vintage – (2012-09-25) ISBN / EAN: 0307950794 / 9780307950796

In the video below, Peter Jackson describes the final stages of post production on The Hobbit, which premieres in New Zealand on Wednesday and opens in the U.S. on Dec. 14.

The second trailer for Disney’s Oz The Great and Powerful, arrived last week (see video, below).

James Franco stars as the Wizard with Rachel Weisz as the Wicked Witch of the East, Mila Kunis as the Wicked Witch of the West, and Michelle Williams as the Good Witch, Glinda.

The movie is scheduled to arrive in theaters on March 8, 2013.

The Disney Book Group will, of course, publish several tie-ins, including a junior novelization, an early reader, a storybook and a behind-the-scenes book. They are also republishing the first two titles in L. Frank Baum’s series, The Wonderful World of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz.

The movie doesn’t arrive until Aug. 23, but publicity drums are already beating for the City of Bones movie adaptation. The first trailer premiered on Entertainment Tonight Wednesday. In print, Entertainment Weekly is doing a “first look” feature, which includes an interview with Cassandra Clare, the author of the YA series (the final title, City of Heavenly Fire is scheduled for May 8, 2014).

And, MTV’s “Hollywood Crush” steps in to tell you the ” 5 Things You May Have Missed” in the less-than-two minute trailer.

Just in time to capitalize on the publicity surrounding the final Twilight saga movie, the first full trailer for The Host hits the interwebs.

It is the based on the only non-Twilight book by Meyer. She also gets a production credit, as she has for the last two Twilight Saga films.

The movie is scheduled for release on March 29, 2013, starring Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones).

Early footage for director Marc Forester’s adaptation of World War Z starring Brad Pitt hit the Web yesterday (it’s just a teaser for the trailer which will debut on tomorrow’s Entertainment Tonight).

There’s not much for the book’s purist fans to go on, so judgment is being saved for the full trailer. The minimalist poster (above, right), however, is the butt of some derision.

The movie arrives in theaters this coming June 21.

UPDATE: Below is the full trailer.

Attention to the movie is bringing new readers to the book; it’s rising on Amazon’s sales rankings.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War Max Brooks Retail Price: $14.95 Kindle Edition: 352 pages Publisher: RH/Broadway – (2007-10-16) ISBN / EAN: 9780307346612, 0307346617

The tie-in trade paperback (RH/Broadway) and audio CD (RH Audio) arrive in April.

Attesting to strong word of mouth, further fueled by Oscar buzz, Ben Affleck’s Argo moved to #1 at the box office during it’s third week. About a crazy scheme to rescue a group of Americans from Teheran in the early ’80’s, using a made-up Hollywood production as its cover, the tagline is, “The Movie was Fake, the Mission was Real.”

How real was the mission? Slate looks at that question in detail in “How Accurate Is Argo?”

As source material, the movie credits “a selection from The Master of Disguise by Antonio J. Mendez and the Wired Magazine article ‘The Great Escape,‘ by Joshuah Bearman.”

The Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA is still in print in trade pbk from HarperCollins/Morrow, downloadable from Overdrive and available in the original 1999 hardcover in many libraries. In it, Tony Mendez, played by Affleck in the movie, writes, with co-author William McConnell, about his CIA career which began in 1965. The Booklist review said, “the reader receives a vivid sense of the clandestine world through [Mendez’s] part in the successful operations to extract a KGB defector from India and an Iranian spy from revolutionary Iran … he also divulges the hitherto-suppressed details of the [Argo] caper.”

Mendez again recounts that story, with a different co-writer, Matt Baglio, in Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History, released in September (Viking) to coordinate with the move. It’s also available in audio from Blackstone and downloadable audio through OverDrive.

Mendez met his wife Jonna when they worked together on another mission. Together, they wrote Spy Dust: Two Masters of Disguise Reveal the Tools and Operations That Helped Win The Cold War (S&S/Atria; still available in trade paperback).

But wait; there’s yet one more book association. The real script for the fake movie, Argo, was  based on Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light (Harper/Voyager). Try putting it on display, to see who catches the reference.

There’s no official release date yet for the film adaptation of G. P. Taylor’s Mariah Mundi and the Midas Box, but its sequel already has the green light. Producer Peter Bevan told The Northern Echo, that the decision “has been very much based upon how happy we are with the first movie as it comes together, and reactions from test audiences.”

The budget for the British production is estimated at $25 million and is expected to be released in 2013.

The author, a former vicar, self-published his first novel Shadowmancer. Word of mouth took off and British publisher, Faber and Faber bought the rights to it as well as Taylor’s next ten books, for £3.5million. It was published here by Penguin/Putnam in 2004 and spent ten weeks on the NYT Children’s Hardcover list, two of them at #1.

The Midas Box was considered a successor to the Harry Potter series in the U.K., but it was not as successful in the U.S. as Shadowmancer. Two more titles in Mariah Mundi series, The Ghost Diamonds and  Ship of Fools, have been released in the U.K., but not here.

The film adaptation of S.J. Watson’s best selling novel, Before I Go To Sleep (Harper, 2011), is moving along.  Nicole Kidman is set to play the lead role as a woman who has lost her memory. Her doctor suggests that she record each day’s events. In the process, she discovers that things are not what they seem. Variety reports that Mark Strong (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) will play the doctor.

Don’t be fooled by the poster; shooting hasn’t begun. Release date is expected in late 2013.

George Clooney has rounded up a roster of big names for his movie about the rescue of art treasures from the hands of  the Nazis, The Monument’s Men. Signed so far are Daniel Craig, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin, and John Goodman, according to Deadline. The film is based on a book by Robert M. Edsel who, after selling his oil and gas exploration company, began researching the efforts of the group called “The Monuments Men,” (which, despite its name,  included at least one woman, Rose Valland, a French Resistance fighter, to be played by Blanchett).

Clooney will direct as well as star. Filming is set to begin next March in Europe.

The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History Robert M. Edsel Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 513 pages Publisher: Hachette/Center Street – (2009-09-03) ISBN 9781599951492

There are several other books on the subject (see our earlier story). Edsel is also publishing new book, Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nations Treasures from the Nazis, this coming May.

Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis Robert M. Edsel Retail Price: $28.95 Hardcover: 464 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2013-05-13) ISBN / EAN: 0393082415 / 9780393082418

Paul Giamatti, Billy Bob Thornton and Jacki Weaver have officially joined Parkland. To be produced by Tom Hanks, it is an adaptation of Vincent Bugliosi’s book on the JFK assassination, Reclaiming History, (Norton, 2007).

The movie will focus on the chaotic events at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, where Kennedy was taken after the shooting. Release is planned for some time next year, which is the fiftieth anniversary of the events. No news yet on the parts each actor will play.

Bugliosi, is known for prosecuting Charles Manson for the sensational Tate/LaBianaca murders of 1969. The book he wrote about that case, Helter Skelter was a long-standing best seller. In Reclaiming History, he concludes that official investigations were correct; Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy, acting alone. At the time the book was released, reviewers made much of the its length —  1,612 pages, plus notes, which were included on a CD-ROM (NYT Book Review, The New Yorker).

When Fleming and Bond had equal billing.

Recent James Bond movies have moved further and further from their origins in Ian Fleming’s series of novels (Wikipedia offers an exhaustive essay on the differences between the books and the movies). Skyfall, which opens next week isn’t based on an Ian Fleming book or short story (and thus, there is no tie-in novel, although there is a behind-the-scenes title, Bond On Set: Filming Skyfall by Greg Williams, Penguin/DK, 10/1/12). Unlike the first Bond movie, Fleming’s name is buried in the credits.

We haven’t yet reached the point where people are surprised to learn that the Bond character first appeared in a series of books. Movie reviewers are keeping his name alive. In his Newsweek review of Skyfall, historian Simon Schama mentions Fleming multiple times and calls Skyfall the best Bond movie yet (he also calls On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, “one of Fleming’s best books” and, the movie version, “stunningly shot and artfully written”).

Bond also continues in books, written by authors hand-picked by the Fleming estate. William Boyd accepts the mantle next, with an as-yet-untitled book, to be published in the fall of 2013, the 60th anniversary of the first Bond book Casino Royale. He will follow in footsteps of several others. Jeffery Deaver published Carte Blanche, in 2011 (S&S). It was a NYT hardcover best seller for 4 weeks. Sebastian Faulks’ Devil May Care (S&S, 2008) also spent a few weeks on the hardcover list. Raymond Benson published 6 titles from 1997 to 2002; John Gardner, 14 (the same number as Fleming wrote himself), from 1981 to 1996. Kingsley Amis, under the name of Robert Markham, was the first, with Colonel Sun in 1968.

Which Bond novels are the best? Several have offered their opinions:

GoodReads, Best/Favorite Bond Book 

BookRiot.com, The Best James Bond Novels: Ranking the Fleming Originals

The Telegraph, Carte Blanche: the greatest James Bond novels

FlashlightWorthy.com, Bond. James Bond

If you are doing Bond book displays, include James Bond’s guides to birds, if you own them. Fleming, a birding enthusiast, named his character after this American ornithologist.

The poster for the upcoming adaptation of Warm Bodies, was released recently. Just prior to that, author Isaac Marion noted on his blog that, although “there is something uncool about writing sequels,” he is doing just that. He asks fans of the first book to “just trust that I have a story to tell and a reason to tell it, and I’ll try my best not to ruin everything.”

The film’s director, Jonathan Levine (50/50) told MTV News earlier this month that he had showed Marion some of the adaptation’s foootage and, “Luckily he was very positive about it. He’s been very supportive, and I think he’s really happy with it, which is a big relief for me.” He also noted, “I read on Twitter the other day that he’s doing a sequel to the book, which I think is awesome.”

Warm Bodies is about a well-adjusted teenage zombie and a human he rescues from a zombie attack. Levine tells MTV News that, “even though this is a love story that involves zombies … [he hopes] zombie enthusiasts will be open to a new twist on the genre.”

As we noted earlier, the beginning of 2013 was once crowded with movies vying for the Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games audiences. Many of them have now been moved to later in the year. The spring now features just three —  Warm Bodies (a zombie romance, Feb. 1), followed by Beautiful Creatures (a supernatural romance, Feb. 13) and The Host (a dystopian romance, March 29).

After the jump, the schedule of all the contenders coming in 2013 (for a list of at all the upcoming movies based on books, click on Upcoming Movies Based on Books— with Tie-ins):

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It seems that audiences took the David Edelstein’s advice on NPR’s Fresh Air to read the Cloud Atlas, rather than to watch it. The film, which opened this weekend is regarded as a flop. The book, however, continues at #2 on Amazon’s sales rankings (it is telling that the original version is doing better than the tie-in, which is at #1,497).

The next big movie based on a book long considered “unfilmable” to hit theaters is Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, which opens Nov. 21. As promo for the movie heats up, the book is rising on Amazon — again, the trade paperback with the original cover, now at #39, is doing better than the tie-in, which is at #3,418.