The science fiction news site, io9 got their hands on a casting call for the film adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s classic,  Enders Game (Tor, 1985), a strong indicator that the project is finally moving ahead, after years in development. Based on their reading of the character descriptions, the movie will stick closely to the book, “All of the book’s themes, including the brutality of warfare and the need to understand your enemy, remain intact.”

The movie will be directed by Gavin Hood (; the script is by by Star Trek‘s Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (X-Men Origins: Wolverine; Rendition).

Jonathan Safran Foer was accused of opportunism when he followed his first novel, the critically acclaimed Everything is Illuminated, with one about 9/11, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (HMH, 2005).

Many wonder how movie audiences will react to the film adaptation (USA Today recently explored  that question). Starring Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks, with newcomer Thomas Horn as the 9-year-old lead, it opens in an Oscar-qualifying limited run this Christmas, to be followed by wider distribution in January. The director, Stephen Daldry, is no stranger to Oscar buzz, he was nominated for each of his first three feature films– Billy Elliott, The Hours and The Reader.

The trailer has just appeared on the Web (warning; don’t watch if you are disturbed by 9/11 imagery):

The tie-in cover is striking variation of the original.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: Movie Tie-in Jonathan Safran Foer Retail Price: $14.95 Paperback: 368 pages Publisher: Mariner Books – (2011-11-01) ISBN / EAN: 0547735022 / 9780547735023

Stephen King followed up on hints he dropped while on a book tour two years ago, by announcing that he is nearly finished writing a sequel to The Shining. He told the audience at George Mason University’s 2011 Fall for the Book festival that the book will be titled Dr. Sleep, (no pub date or ISBN has been announced yet, however).

Saying he had always wondered what happened to Danny Torrance, an idea “wormed” into his head,

I knew there were bad people in this story that were like vampires, only what they sucked out was not blood, but psychic energy from special people like Danny Torrance. I came to realize that these people are called ‘The Tribe” … and they travel around on the highways.

Below, he reads a section:

King’s next book, 11/22/63, (Scribner, 11/8; Unabridged CD, S&S Audio) was recently optioned by film director Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs). It is a time-travel novel about a high school English teacher who goes through a time portal in an attempt to stop the Kennedy assassination. Booklist says King began writing this book years ago and it exhibits an “intoxicating, early-King bouquet of ambition and swagger.”

Ron Howard’s ambitious plans for a TV/film adaptation of King’s The Dark Tower series were abandoned over the summer. The eighth title in the book series, The Wind Through the Keyhole (Scribner), is scheduled for publication in April.

It seems that Michael Lewis is everywhere. His new book, coming next week, Boomerang; Travels in the New Third World, (Norton, 10/3; S&S Audio), on the global financial crisis, gets strong praise today from Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times; “Michael Lewis possesses the rare storyteller’s ability to make virtually any subject both lucid and compelling.”

The movie based on his book about the Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, Moneyball, is number 2 at the box office, right after another surprise success, the 3-D rerelease of the 17-year-old Lion King  (get ready; now Star Wars, Top Gun and Titanic are all slated for 3-D rereleases).

Last year, the film of Lewis’s The Blind Side, (Norton, 2006) was also a success. Sensing a winner, Hollywood is now giving Lewis the opportunity to write the script for the long-dormant adaptation of his first book, the best-selling Liar’s Poker (Norton, 1989) about his time working as a bond trader at Salomon Brothers.

Also in development is an adaptation of Lewis’s best seller on the U.S. fiscal crisis, The Big Short (Norton, 2010), with Brad Pitt’s company producing.

Moneyball, the movie is quite different from the book. Entertainment Weekly urges “Love the movie? Read the book” and the L.A. Times offers a guide to how the film differs from real life.

Katherine Heigl dons dark hair and a Jersey accent to play Stephanie Plum in the movie adaptation of Janet Evanovich’s One for the Money, which opens January 27th. The trailer was just released on the Web.

Tie-in:

One for the Money (Movie Tie-in) (Stephanie Plum) Janet Evanovich Retail Price: $14.99 Paperback: 352 pages Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin – (2011-11-22) ISBN / EAN: 0312600739 / 9780312600730

Three of the four major movie releases opening today have a book connection. Click on the movie titles to watch the trailer.

Moneyball — Based on the best selling book by Michael Lewis, the new Brad Pitt movie may knock the 3-D version of The Lion King out of its #1 position, but money is also on Dophin Tale (see below). Moneyball has been receiving great reviews and Oscar buzz. The book, as MTV notes, “isn’t exactly an obvious candidate for Hollywood’s adaptation machine. It’s filled with geeky tales about the importance of obscure stats like ‘wins above replacement,’ the founding of fantasy sports and the evolution of a guy named Bill James from factory worker to baseball deity.”

Lewis’s next book, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World (W.W. Norton, 10/3/11), explores how cheap credit fueled bubbles around the world with disastrous effects (as in Ireland and Greece) and how it that may come home to the US. Tie-in, published by W.W. Norton.

Dolphin Tale — is not based on a book, but on the true story of a dolphin named Winter whowas  rescued from trapping ropes, only to lose her tail due to her injuries. A prosthetic engineer figured out how to create a replacement, which also led to a breakthrough in engineering human prostheses. The story was covered in the news and Scholastic published a picture book about it, Winter’s Tail: How One Little Dolphin Learned to Swim Again (2009). Scholastic has published an official movie book, Dolphin Tale: A Tale of True Friendship, with stills from the movie, Dolphin Tale: The Junior Novel and a paperback reprint of Winter’s Tail.

The Killer Elite — The smallest of the movies opening this weekend, both in size of budget and number of theaters carrying it, this movie is based on The Feather Men by the British explorer and writer, Ranulph Fiennes. The story of an elite group of British soldiers, it raised controversy when it was publishing in the UK in 1991, which resurfaced when the movie was announced last year. It stars Robert De Niro, Jason Statham, Yvonne Strahovski,  and Clive Owen. Tie-in published by Ballantine.

The first official trailer for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (a teaser, with no dialog, supposedly leaked earlier this year) just debuted on the Web. The American adaptation of the Stieg Larsson novel is directed by David Fincher and stars Daniel Craig as journalist Mikael Blomkvist, Rooney Mara as hacker Lisbeth Salander and Christopher Plummer as the man who hires them to investigate a murder. The movie opens on Dec. 21.

Looks like it will be at least as dark as the Swedish version.

Three of today’s four major movie debuts are based on books (although two of them probably fall into the category of “Who knew?” for most movie goers). Click on the movie titles to watch the trailers.

I Don’t Know How She Does It — The movie has brought renewed attention to Allison Pearson’s 2002 best seller (a chick lit title from Knopf, of all houses); the tie-in is now at #75 on USA Today’s best seller list and #14 on the NYT Trade Paperback list. Starring Sarah Jessica Parker, it looks like Sex and the City with day care (the L.A. Times‘ review bears out this suspicion). Too bad; when the book first came out, it was regarded as fresh and new. Considered similar to, but better than Bridget Jones Diary, it was a hit in both the author’s native England and in the U.S. — Tie-in, Anchor, 9780307948564.

Drive — Here’s a twist; a Danish filmmaker directing a movie based on a noir thriller by an American writer. Nicolas Winding Refnbest won the Cannes best director award for this adaptation of James Sallis’s novel of the same title. PW describes the author’s audience as a “small but fiercely devoted readership,” One wonders how faithful the movie is to the book, his first to be adapted to the screen. Reviews emphasize the violence while, as PW describes the author, he is ” best known for his literate, exquisitely crafted crime novels [and] impressive body of work over the past 40 years, with more than two dozen volumes of fiction, poetry, translation, essays, and criticism.” Sallis’s latest, The Killer Is Dying, (Walker) was just released in August. — Tie-in, Mariner/HMH, 9780547791098.

Straw Dogs — Reviews focus on whether this version is better than Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 thriller, starring Dustin Hoffman. Few realize that both are based on a novel, The Siege of Trencher’s Farm, by Gordon Williams. The Peckinpah original was so sexually violent, that the British censors blocked its release in video until 2003. That brought new attention to the once-prominent author (The Guardian‘s profile was headlined, “Gordon Who?“), even though the objectionable scenes were not in the book. — Tie-in, Titan Books, 9780857681195

Last night, certain advance screenings of Straw Dogs and Moneyball included a surprise, an unusually long eight-minute “teaser trailer” for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. MovieLine sees this as another “brilliantly secretive” viral marketing effort (following the “leaked” trailer that appeared at the end of May).

The trailer is not available on the Web, and won’t be shown at regular screenings of Straw Dogs and Moneyball. The perceived exclusivity has just added to the excitement for the special few who saw it. The Playlist offeres a shot-by-shot description and dozens of critics have jumped in to assess what they saw (SlashFilm.com rounds up some of the reactions. Advice; skip the breathless intro).

The trailer has put to rest concerns that Mara Rooney’s girl- next-door quality will undercut her ability to play the dark Lisbeth Salander.

The movie, directed by David Fincher, also stars Daniel Craig and opens December 21st. Tie-in editions will be available from Knopf in mass market and trade paperback on Nov. 1.

Vanessa Diffenbaugh, whose first novel, The Language of Flowers is at #6 on the the Indie Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list and debuted at #13 on the 9/18 NYT list, got a hearty new endorsement for her book in the form of a movie deal, according to The Hollywood Reporter. In a statement, the producers say,”Great characters make great movies and these are the most vivid and compelling women we have read in a long, long time.”

The book has been published in several other countries (the Australian cover is at the left, above and the British one at the right. The words on the cover, which don’t appear on the U.S. edition, are “Anyone can grow into something beautiful”). It has reached #1 on best seller lists in Italy and #5 in the U.K.

The novel explores the difficulty many foster children have in forming relationships. Diffenbaugh, who has raised foster children of her own, used her $1 million book advance, to set up the Camellia Network (in the language of flowers, camellias stand for “my destiny in in your hands”). Among other activities, the network asks book clubs to help raise money for the organization, with the opportunity to win a call-in or personal visit from the author.

Poor Pooh Bear. He didn’t do that well at the box office (he was railroaded by a certain wizard and then was blind-sided by a bevy of blue creatures), so he will be exiting the theaters to try his luck on DVD.

Disney’s Winnie the Pooh was a hit with the critics, who said it showed how much life is still left in good old 2-D animation. After disappointing ticket sales, it will be released on DVD, Blu-Ray, and via download on October 25th.

One of the tie-ins at pictured at left; for a full list of tie-ins, go to Books to Movies, Now Playing, with Tie-ins.

Filming of The Hunger Games, which has been shooting in North Carolina, wrapped on Saturday. The movie now goes in to post-production in preparation for the March 23rd release.

Asheville News 13 anchor Russ Bowen,who has been tweeting from the set, announced the wrap, which was confirmed by Lionsgate. He also says, “Expect a few changes in film version. You will be surprised but will likely like them. I won’t give spoilers though.”

Lionsgate has set up a viral marketing site, TheCapitol.PN.

Director Gary Ross offers a bit of insight into the very brief teaser trailer that debuted on 8/28 during MTV’s Video Music Awards.

Australian director Baz Luhrmann reinterpreted Romeo and Juliet as a hip, modern story starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes (Romeo + Juliet, 1996), and used modern music to tell a story set in 1899 (Moulin Rouge, 2001). What is he likely to do with The Great Gatsby?

One clue: he is shooting it in 3D. He has also spent millions on buying (not renting) a fleet of classic cars. As Time magazine says of the $125 million production, which began shooting this week in Australia, “So piles of cash, knockout stars, cutting-edge 3D visuals, all to channel a relatively low-key (plot-wise) American classic. What could possibly go wrong?”

The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio, as Jay Gatsby, Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan, Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway, and Joel Edgerton (currently starring in Warrior) as Tom Buchanan. Luhrman, who has said his influences are Italian opera and Bollywood, has also hired the highly regarded Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan to play Meyer Wolfshein.

If you’ve been wondering what’s happening to the film adaptation of Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments, (the first title in the series, City of Bones, at left), you’re in good company. The star is wondering the same thing.

Lily Collins, daughter of singer Phil Collins and a current Hollywood hot commodity, was signed months ago to play Clary Fray. She told MTV News this week that she’s in the dark about when shooting will begin, and expressed hope that the delays will give the producers, “more time to properly put the pieces together and focus on getting the rest of the casting right and perfecting the script.”

The only other actor who has been cast is Jamie Campbell Bower as Jace Wayland.

Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy has been getting applause from critics at the Venice film festival. In the following “featurette,” various people, (including author John le Carré) explain why George Smiley (played by Gary Oldman) is cool even though he is the “anti-Bond.”

The movie opens in theaters in U.S. on Dec. 9th.