USA Today quotes Kansas bookseller Vivien Jennings about Doubleday’s big debut novel of the fall, The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern (9/13),

Let’s say The Help and The Da Vinci Code were high-water marks in our bookselling history. My prediction is The Night Circus is the 200-year flood. I loved (those books), but this is better…It’s a whole different level of writing…this book is going to be a best seller right out of the shoot.

Hollywood is also a believer. Summit, which produced the Twilight movies, bought the rights in January and is in talks with David Heyman (Harry Potter) to produce. The over-the-top success of the final Harry Potter movie has studios rushing to find more fantasy titles; A Discovery of Witches, (Viking, Feb) last season’s big debut, has been signed by Warner Bros. Deadline reports that the studio plans to put a writer on it immediately. Discovery is the first in a trilogy. Author Deborah Harkness is at work on the second book, Shadow of Night, coming from Viking next summer (no ordering information available yet).

EarlyWord GalleyChatters have been excited about the The Night Circus since galleys began appearing in March (if you didn’t get one, digital copies are available through NetGalley or Edelweiss).

Will it be as big as The Help or The Da Vinci Code? Collection Development Coordinator Wendy Bartlett at Cuyahoga is dubious. While she thinks it will be a best seller, she’s putting her money on another major debut, The Language of Flowers, ordering ten times more copies of it than of The Night Circus.

The Language of Flowers: A Novel Vanessa Diffenbaugh Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Ballantine Books – (2011-08-23) ISBN / EAN: 034552554X / 9780345525543

Large Print; Thorndike, ISBN: 9781410441713, $34.99, 9/7/2011

We must be suffering from Hunger Games fatigue, a phenomenon identified by the L.A. Times. We didn’t post the admittedly cool flaming movie poster that appeared on the Web yesterday or the countdown widget (as of now, just 245 more days until the movie’s release on March 23).

Nevertheless, we were interested to learn that Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence may have another book-related project in the works. Deadline reports she is the leading contender for a coveted role in The Silver Linings Playbook, opposite Mark Wahlberg. The movie is based on the debut novel by Matthew Quick (one of Nancy Pearl’s picks for summer reading, 2009).

Production is set to begin this fall.

Director Peter Jackson just released a video from the set of The Hobbit, which recently wrapped the first few months of shooting in New Zealand.

In the video, a cast member predicts that the movie will bring beards back in a big way. Get ready to see these on the street:

You have a while to prepare; The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is scheduled for release on December 14, 2012 and The Hobbit: There and Back Again, the following year, on December 13, 2013.

Below is the YouTube version of the vlog; watch the HD version here.

A debut dystopian YA title, Legend by Marie Lu (Putnam) arriving at the end of November, gets early attention from USA Today.

A movie is already in the works, with the producers who worked on the Twilight Saga. Author Marie Lu will appear at Comic-Con this week on a panel with several other women writers, about “kick-ass heroines” in science fiction and fantasy. Lu is the creator of a popular Facebook game, on which the book is based, also called Legend.

In the prepub media, the book has so far only been reviewed by Kirkus, which gave it a star. The first in a planned trilogy, it has an announced a 200,000 first printing.

Legend Marie Lu Retail Price: $17.99 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Putnam Juvenile – (2011-11-29) ISBN / EAN: 039925675X / 9780399256752

Penguin Audio; 9781611760088

More was going on at the box office this weekend than the confrontation between the HP gang and Lord Voldemort. There was also a battle between the old-fashioned, hand-drawn 2-D animation of Disney’s Winnie the Pooh and the the 3-D live-action HP finale.

HP came out more than victorious, breaking box office records, including its own. The silly old bear? Way behind, in sixth place.

Why did Disney submit Pooh to this humiliation? It seems test marketing made the producers confident that Pooh could stand up to the competition. Don’t count him out yet, says the movie news site Thompson on Hollywood; word of mouth is likely to bring Pooh a wider audience, including adults nostalgic for their childhoods.

Several tie-ins are available:

Winnie the Pooh: A Day of Sweet Surprises Retail Price: $6.99 Paperback: 32 pages Publisher: Disney Press – (2011-05-03) ISBN / EAN: 1423135903 / 9781423135906

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Winnie the Pooh: Forever Friends (Disney Early Readers) Lisa Ann Marsoli Retail Price: $3.99 Paperback: 32 pages Publisher: Disney Press – (2011-05-03) ISBN / EAN: 1423135784 / 9781423135784

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Winnie the Pooh: Hundred-Acre-Wood Treasury (Disney Winnie the Pooh) Retail Price: $15.99 Hardcover: 128 pages Publisher: Disney Press – (2011-05-03) ISBN / EAN: 1423135911 / 9781423135913

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Winnie the Pooh: The Essential Guide (Dk Essential Guides) DK Publishing Retail Price: $12.99 Hardcover: 48 pages Publisher: DK CHILDREN – (2011-06-20) ISBN / EAN: 0756672112 / 9780756672119

Sorry, folks, but the rumor has been confirmed. Tom Cruise will play Jack Reacher in the film, One Shot, based on Lee Child’s novel, according to Deadline.

Shooting will begin this fall.

As dozens of you have pointed out, the role will be a stretch for Cruise; Reacher is described in the novels as 6’5″ and 250 pounds. Child himself has endorsed Cruise, however, saying, “Reacher’s size in the books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise portrays in his own way.”

One Shot is the ninth novel in the  Reacher series. Coming this fall is #17, The Affair, (Delacorte, 9/27).

In yesterday’s post about the upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie, we said that Noomi Rapace, who will stars as Lisbeth Salander in the English-language version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, also appears in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. A comment pointed out that Rooney Mara is actually in the English-language version. Thinking we had the wrong actress, we made a correction.

Turns out we had the right girl, but the wrong movie. Rapace, starred in the Danish -Swedish language adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, and is also in Sherlock Holmes movie.

We’ve also learned that Penguin will release an anthology of Sherlock Holmes stories in September that includes The Final Problem, which Holmes 2 is loosely based on. A burst on the cover reads, “Inspiration for the Major Motion Picture.”

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Conan Doyle Retail Price: $14.00 Paperback: 272 pages Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) – (2011-09-27) ISBN / EAN: 0143120158 / 9780143120155

Warning: don’t watch this first thing in the morning or if you are at all jumpy.

The premiere of the film adaptation of Tatiana de Rosnay’s novel Sarah’s Key at the MOMA in NYC has brought renewed attention to book, causing both the tie-in, released last week, and the original trade paperback to rise on Amazon’s sales rankings. The author is pictured at the left, with Diane von Furstenberg, who hosted the event.

The movie stars Kristin Scott Thomas and opens July 22.

Sarah’s Key (Movie Tie-in) Tatiana de Rosnay Retail Price: $13.99 Paperback: 336 pages Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin – (2011-07-05) ISBN / EAN: 1250004349 / 9781250004345

The author’s book, The House I Loved, is coming from St. Martin’s on Feb. 12, 2012; ISBN 9780312593308.

The sequel to last year’s surprise hit movie, Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr. as the master detective and Jude Law as his sidekick, Dr. Watson, arrives on Dec. 16th. The first movie was “inspired” by Arthur Conan Doyle’s character, but the second, called Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows features Holmes’s nemesis, draws from the story, The Final Problem.

UPDATE:
Penguin will release an anthology of Sherlock Holmes stories in September that includes The Final Problem. A burst on the cover reads, “Inspiration for the Major Motion Picture.”

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Conan Doyle Retail Price: $14.00 Paperback: 272 pages Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) – (2011-09-27) ISBN / EAN: 0143120158 / 9780143120155

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Last year, Penguin released the following collection of Holmes stories.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Conan Doyle Retail Price: $14.00 Paperback: 336 pages Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) – (2009-09-29) ISBN / EAN: 9780143117025 / 9780143117025

Official Movie Site: SherlockHolmes2.WarnerBros.com

Note: The YouTube version embeded below is supposedly “only” on iTunes trailers, so it may disappear. In that case, link here.

The gypsy Sim, shown in the opening sequence is played by Noomi Repace who starred as Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish-language adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy. Rooney Mara will be playing that character in the English-language version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, scheduled to open 12/21.

The first trailer for Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of The Adventures of Tintin, hit the Web yesterday. The director’s first animated film, it features the voices of Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot, Defiance) as boy reporter Tintin, with Daniel Craig (Quantum of Solace, Defiance) as the pirate, Red Rackham and uses performance-capture technology (the actors’ actual movements are the basis of the computer-generated animation).

The film, the first in a planned trilogy, is based on the first two books in Belgian artist Georges “Hergé” Remi’s Tintin comic series, Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure and is a joint project between Spielberg and Peter Jackson, who will direct the second in the series.

It is scheduled for release on Dec. 23.

Official Web site: TinTin.com

For information on Little Brown’s TinTin publishing program, including tie-in and re-releases of the original titles, see our earlier post.

Hold your groans; this is one may not come to pass.

Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes; releasing Aug. 5 and expected to a summer’s blockbuster) is talking about doing a big-screen adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Entertainment Weekly reports the news and comments on the “motion-capture” technique Wyatt plans to use, “Seeing as how blown away we were by Wyatt’s use of the technology in clips for Apes, [watch trailer here] it’s easy to get excited about the prospect of Farm, which would feature a diverse group of human-like barn animals leading a rebellion.”

On the other hand, if Rise of the Planet of the Apes does as well as expected, the director may turn his attention to making it a franchise.

Hallmark Entertainment released a made-for-TV version of Animal Farm in 1999, with Kelsey Grammar doing the voice of Snowball.

If you were to cast the movie of the high-concept comic novel, Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips (Little, Brown, 2007), which imagines the Greek gods are alive and living in a modern-day moldy brownstone in London, who would you pick to play Zeus, the down-on-his-luck, now crazy patriarch?

Would you choose a quirky, somewhat scary actor, like Christopher Walken?

If so, then you’d be in agreement with director Marc Turtletaub (producer of Little Miss Sunshine, Everything is Illuminated and Away We Go), who has also chosen a roster of other well-known American actors, necessitating a switch in location to a brownstone in NYC. Shooting begins mid-July (via Thompson on Hollywood).

The rest of the cast includes:

Alicia Silverstone and Ebon Moss-Bachrach — Kate and Neil, mortals who share the house with the Olympians

Sharon Stone — Aphrodite, a phone-sex operator

Oliver Platt  — Apollo, a TV psychic

Edie Falco — Artemis,  a dog-walker

Nelsan Ellis — Dionysus, a night-club owner

Phylicia Rashad — Demeter

John Turturro — Hades

Rosie Perez — Persephone

The ads for the new Harry Potter movie say simply, “It all ends” a week from Friday. For the actors, the ending came earlier:

Two new behind-the-scenes videos are feeding fan frenzy.

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A childhood favorite, The Borrowers by Mary Norton (Harcourt, 1953) is coming to screens in two forms; an animated movie from Japan and a BBC live-action film, to be shown on BBC-One at Christmas (no news on when it may appear in the US).

Called Arrietty, after Arriety Clock, the borrower family’s teenage daughter, the Japanese film will be dubbed in the US by Amy Poehler, Will Arnett and Carol Burnett (the trailer below is the British version, dubbed by other actors) and is scheduled for release next year, on February 17.

The BBC adaptation, called The Borrowers and starring Stephen Fry, Victoria Wood and Christopher Eccleston, just began filming.

The Borrowers was adapted as a film in 1997 with John Goodman, Jim Broadbent and Celia Imrie, as well as an American 1973 made-for-TV movie and a 1992 BBC TV series.