The multiple award-winning debut YA novel, Before I Die by Jenny Downham, (RH/David Fickling, 2007), has been adapted for the screen, with a strong cast, led by Dakota Fanning (trying on a British accent) as 17-year-old Tessa, who is trying to make the most of her life before she dies of leukemia. It also stars Jeremy Irvine (War Horse) as her shy next-door neighbor Adam and Kaya Scodelario (Skins) as her best friend Zoey.

Unfortunately, the title had to be prettied up for the movies, so it has been changed to Now Is Good and, naturally, it’s been given the Hollywood handle of “The Bucket List for Teens.”

A trailer has just been released online. Several sources note it will be released on May 25th, but that is the UK date; the US date has not been set.

Coming this weekend is one of Hollywood’s biggest gambles of the year, Disney’s $250 million John Carter.

In today’s NYT, Charles McGrath, former editor of the Book Review, looks at the movie’s source material, A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, a book “filled with inconsistencies and plot threads that are never followed up.” It has nevertheless, stayed in print for decades.

McGrath defines its appeal as “a kind of cheerful boys’ adventure romanticism” and says that the very qualities that have “made it so transporting for generations of readers” are the ones that have made it “both tempting and daunting to filmmakers, who have struggled since the ’30s to come up with a version that will play to both young viewers and adults, newcomers and members of the cult.”

Many are waiting anxiously for the film’s opening this Friday, to see if the box office proves it to be the next Avatar or the next Ishtar.

To feed speculation, Disney released a new 10-minute trailer over the weekend (see our Upcoming Movies— with Tie-ins for the many re-releases of various versions of the book).

Markus Zusak‘s young adult novel The Book Thief  (RH/Knopf, 2006) was optioned by Fox six years ago, shortly after it was released.

Signs of life appeared this week, when Brian Percival (Downton Abbey) signed on to direct.

According to Variety, the studio wants to begin production this summer.

Nicole Kidman is in talks to star in Before I Go to Sleep, based on the debut psychological thriller by British writer S.J. Watson. A GalleyChat favorite long before publication in June of last year, it went on to become a NYT best seller, rising to #7 on the hardcover fiction list.

Kidman has several book-related projects in the works. She stars, with Clive Owen, in HBO’s Hemingway & Gellhorn, premiering in May. Shooting is complete on The Paperboy, based on the book by Pete Dexter, but no US release date has been set and she is getting ready to shoot The Railway Man opposite Colin Firth. Back in October, she acquired the screen rights to another GalleyChat favorite, Family Fang by Kevin Wilson.

Railway Man: A POW’s Searing Account of War, Brutality and Forgiveness Eric Lomax Retail Price: $16.95 Paperback: 294 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (Dec., 1980) ISBN : 9780393334982

You’ve undoubtedly seen a trailer or two for John Carter, Disney’s $250 million 3-D sci-fi epic, opening on March 9.

Not that the heavy promotion matters; the Daily Beast reports that it’s expected to tank at the box office.

One of the problems is that people can’t grasp what it’s about, even though a new trailer, which arrived this week, is less murky than the others (two fans were so disgusted with the SuperBowl trailer, that they pieced together their own from available clips).

Junot Diaz might have helped clear up some of the questions; he’s written the introduction to the Library of America version of A Princess of Mars, the Edgar Rice Burroughs’s book the film is based on.

Library of America? The folks whod do “authoritative texts of great American writing…printed on premium acid-free paper”? Yes, them.

Unfortunately, however, the book won’t be available until after the movie releases.

Meanwhile, we have just this quote from Diaz to go on; “A Princess of Mars is singularly important… in that it innovated the grammar for the American version of the lost world romance.”

Another major author is taken with the book; Michael Chabon worked the screenplay.

For more tie-ins, go to our listing of Upcoming Movies — with Tie-ins

Not that you really need to stock up.

A Princess of Mars Edgar Rice Burroughs Retail Price: $20.00 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Penguin/Library of America – (2012-04-12) ISBN / EAN: 1598531654 / 9781598531657

In our story about Oscars based on books, we overlooked one — the Best Animated Short, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, based on the book by William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg.

The trouble is, there is no book yet. Ironically, the story, which celebrates the joys of the printed page, is currently only available as a storybook app (it was was the top-grossing book app last year and received admiring reviews from both SLJ and Kirkus) and as the animated short.

The print book won’t be released until July by S&S/Atheneum. Joyce who was a formerly a Pixar designer as well as a children’s book author, is the film’s co-director, so he doesn’t have to follow the traditional sequence of book, followed by film adaptation, and then a tie-in edition. As Joyce told Variety last week, his two-year-old company Moonbot Studios sees things differently,

Our properties … our stories — we don’t see them as just one thing in one medium. We sort of sit there and go: “Is this a great movie? Is this a great book?” And if the answers are “yes,” then we think of them in whatever different (form is applicable).

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore William Joyce Retail Price: $17.99 Hardcover: 56 pages Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers – (2012-07-24) ISBN / EAN: 1442457023 / 9781442457027

Joyce and Oldenburg have just released a second app, The Numberlys, which they describe in an Oscar’s backstage interview as “a remake of Metropolis but for kids.” The Variety story says it will also become a printed book, but no news yet on publication date.

Joyce is the executive producer for the Dreamworks feature film, Rise of the Guardians, coming Nov. 21, which involves a complex book publishing program, including picture books and chapter books.

The second title in the chapter book series was published last week:

E. Aster Bunnymund and the Warrior Eggs at the Earth’s Core! (Guardians of Childhood Chapter Books) William Joyce Retail Price: $14.99 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers – (2012-02-21) ISBN / EAN: 1442430508 / 9781442430501

The poster for the movie was just arrived online.

A large number of this year’s Academy Award nominees were based on books, thirteen in all, but only four went home with statues last night. In fact, the big winner this year was a movie that rejected words, The Artist.

The second biggest winner, in terms of number of Oscars, was Martin Scorsese’s Hugo.

The Help, The Descendants, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo each won a single Oscar

The film business could use the box office boost that the Awards bring; as CBS Sunday Morning reported, theater attendance in 2011 was the lowest in 15 years.

More good news for teen fans of Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl (Hachette/LBYR, 2009). Not only have the two leads been cast for the film adaptation (rising star Jack O’Connell, from the British TV series, Skins and newcomer Alice Englert, join Viola Davis, already cast as Amma), but the authors just announced that the fourth and final volume in the book series, Beautiful Redemption, is coming October 23rd.

The publisher is planning a “cover reveal” in March (oooh, let’s guess; red lettering this time?), but we have the exclusive on the ISBN — 9780316123532.

Robert Pattison, the Twilight heart throb, is getting terrible reviews for his starring role in the costume drama Bel Ami, an adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s novel. It arrives in US theaters on March 2 (UPDATE: It arrives later, June 8).

He’s probably cheered by the news that his next movie, Cosmopolis, based on the book by Don DeLillo (S&S/Scribner, 2003), won the MTV Movie Brawl for the must-see movie of 2012 (no specific theatrical release date has been announced). It was also selected by Playlist as one of the 50 Most Anticipated Films of 2012.

Co-star Paul Giamatti reacts:

UPDATE: The title of the movie has been changed to Killing Them Softly and the date has been changed to Oct. 19.

Hollywood sites are going crazy over Brad Pitt’s look for the film version of George V Higgins’ Cogan’s Trade (gasp; is that a MULLET?). A release date of Sept. 21 was just announced (as MovieFone notes, it’s the anniversary of the release of Moneyball).

Pitt is joined by Ray Liotta and James Gandolfini (yes, they play mobsters, but this time, they’re Boston mobsters) as well as Sam Shepard and Richard Jenkins. It’s the third film by director Andrew Dominik, who also directed Pitt in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Cogan’s Trade is the third of Higgins’ 25 published novels. He claimed to have scrapped 14 before The Friends of Eddie Coyle, was published in 1972. It was made into a movie, starring Robert Mitchum, the following year, but this is the first adaptation of a Higgins’ title since. As the Independent said in Higgins’ 1999 obituary,

Oddly, despite the rich dialogue, Higgins’s books did not effortlessly translate into the cinematic medium. The Friends of Eddie Coyle made an excellent movie, thanks partly to a riveting, and almost poetic, performance by Robert Mitchum as Coyle, but its success was really one for its director Peter Yates.

Higgins has influenced many of today’s writers. Among them is Elmore Leonard who recently noted that he often re-reads a portion of The Friends of Eddie Coyle before beginning his work day; “The book set me free. I saw, this was how you do it. I learned so much about dialogue and cadence from this book.’’

Random House’s Vintage/Lizard imprint recently re-released several of Higgins’ books (in print and as ebooks, available on OverDrive).

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

CLOUD ATLAS Wrap Shot: Behind the piano are the three directors Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski and Andy Wachowski. Seated, at back is the book's author, David Mitchell

The incredibly complex film shoot of Cloud Atlas (three directors, actors playing multiple roles, a story that spans the globe, and an internationally-funded budget estimated at $100 million) wrapped in December. Readers of the book will recognize the props, featured in the wrap shot, above (detailed here — click on photo to view larger version).

One of the stars, Hugh Grant, tells the film magazine Empire that, he will portray six evil characters and do “a lot of killing and raping.” However, because of his prosthetic make-up, audiences “won’t know that I am in the film.”

A US release date has not been set, but it is expected some time in the fall.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter won’t hit screens until June 22nd, but the President’s 203rd birthday was just too good an opportunity to promote the film about this little-known aspect of his past. On Friday, Fox held an event at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, IL. On hand were the book’s author, Seth Grahame-Smith, the movie’s star, Benjamin Walker, and director, Timur Bekmambetov.

Producer Tim Burton was busy with other things, but sent the following video.

As a result of the publicity, the book is again in the top 100 on Amazon’s sales rankings (it’s currently at #79). Tie-ins will be released in April.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Seth Grahame-Smith Retail Price: $14.99 Paperback: 384 pages Publisher: Grand Central Publishing – (2012-04-03) ISBN / EAN: 1455510173 / 9781455510177

Mass Mkt Pbk., 9781455510184; Audio, 9781611132151

Jonathan Demme has lined up financing for his long-dreamed-of project, an animated movie based on Dave Eggers’ post-Katrina book, Zeitoun, (McSweeny’s Books, 2009). It is projected for release some time in 2014.

The book features Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-American who refused to evacuate New Orleans when the storm hit. Using a borrowed canoe, he rescued neighbors and their pets. Suddenly, he was arrested and accused of being a terrorist and held for nearly a month. Eggers, Zeitoun and his wife were interviewed in 2010 about those events.

Unfortunately, the story was recently tarnished when it was learned that Zeitoun plead guilty to domestic abuse charges last year, leading the L.A. Times to speculate on whether the combined pressure of the after-effects of the storm and public attention had adversely affected the man who was considered a hero and a “good husband.”

The book was recently selected as the 2012 Greenwich [CT] Reads title and it was the 2010 San Francisco Reads selection.

After Saturday’s tease of the AL:VH trailer, feast your eyes on the full 82 minutes.

So, what’s happened to the once-hot adaptation of that progenitor of literary mashups, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? New York magazine’s “Vuture” blog casts strong doubt on whether it will ever materialize, now that three directors and countless A-list actresses have backed away.

Of course, that will all change if AL:VH is a hit.

As part of CBS Saturday Morning‘s tribute to Abraham Lincoln on his 203rd birthday, they leaked a bit of the film adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s mashup, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (Hachette/Grand Central), scheduled to open June 22. The segment begins 1:25 minutes into the video, below.

Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln, based on the final section of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, with Daniel Day-Lewis in the lead, debuts next fall, according to the story (all other sources list it as coming this December, so we’re sticking with that).