Fans of both Rob Reiner and YA author Wendelin Van Draanen have been eagerly awaiting Reiner’s movie of Van Draanen’s novel, Flipped.

Reiner has changed the contemporary setting of the novel to the late ’50s and early ’60s. The story is about the love/hate relationship between two eighth graders; you can’t help but think “Stand by Me meets When Harry Met Sally.”

In an interiew in USA Today, Reiner credits his 16-year-old son Nick, for introducing him to the book.

The movie set will open in most theaters on August 27; it will open in a limited number of theaters in early August.

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Tie-in:

Flipped Wendelin Van Draanen Retail Price: $8.99 Paperback: 240 pages Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers – (2010-08-10) ISBN / EAN: 0375863478 / 9780375863479

That’s what Entertainment Weekly dubs The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Unfortunately, Entertainment Weekly does not post its features, so we’ll have to grab the magazine, on stands tomorrow, to find out more.

An EW teaser blog post, however, says that speculation about who will play the main characters in the English-language movie is just that; speculation. Rumor has it that Brad Pitt and Daniel Craig could play Blomkvist, and some are betting on Kristen Stewart, Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, or Carey Mulligan for Lisbeth. Producer Scott Rudin will only say that casting should be complete in a month or two.

Meanwhile, we’re wondering how long it’s been since a book appeared on Entertainment Weekly‘s cover.

The long-delayed movie (actually, movies, since it is planned as two films) of The Hobbit is facing more delays. At the end of May, Guillermo del Toro resigned as director, due to the delays caused by MGM’s debt problems.

Yesterday, the film news blog TheWrap reported that David Yates’s (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) says rumors that he will direct are “not true at all.”

Further, the project has not yet received the greenlight from the studio.

UPDATE: Deadline Hollywood reports that Peter Jackson, who directed Lord of the Rings, will direct.

The bio of Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff coming in November caught the attention of several librarians at BEA’s Shout & Share program. It’s also caught the attention of film producer Scott Rudin, who has bought the rights to the book, reports USA Today‘s Book Buzz column.

Who will play the lead?

Rudin says he is developing it “for and with” Angelina Jolie.

Cleopatra: A Biography Stacy Schiff Retail Price: $29.99 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-11-01) ISBN / EAN: 0316001929 / 9780316001922

Hachette LARGE PRINT; Hdbk; 9780316120449; $31.99
Hachette Audio; UNABR; 9781607887010; 34.98

Brad Pitt’s production company has bought the film rights to Tom Rachman’s best selling debut novel about a struggling newspaper in Rome, The Imperfectionists, according to Canada’s National Post (author Rachman is Canadian).

The book received an over-the-top review from Christopher Buckley on the cover of the April 29th NYT Book Review, followed by several other strong reviews. It has been the NYT best seller list for 4 weeks, peaking at #8 and is at #15 as on the current list.

Pitt has many irons in the fire, including a starring role in Moneyball, based on the book by Michael Lewis, set to begin shooting this summer. His name has been connected to two dozen other projects, including The Big Short, also by Michael Lewis and The Lost City of Z, based on the nonfiction title by David Grann. Reports from the Cannes Film Festival say it will be Pitt’s next project after completing Moneyball.

For a time, Pitt was rumored for the lead of the English-language version of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but last week the film news site The Wrap reported that Daniel Criag, the most recent James Bond, is in negotiations to play Mikael Blomkvist. The Wrap also reports that the female lead, Lisbeth Salander, has not been cast, despite a report in The Times of London that Carey Mulligan (nominated for an Oscar last year for An Education) had the role. Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Natalie Portman are all in the running, according to The Wrap.

The Imperfectionists Tom Rachman Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: The Dial Press – (2010-04-06) ISBN / EAN: 0385343663 / 9780385343664

Adobe EPUB eBook available from OverDrive
Recorded Books:

• UNABR CD; 8 CDs; 9781449825621; $92.75; Anticipated Release: Sep 07, 2010
• UNABR Cassette; 8 Cassettes;.9781449825614; $67.75; Anticipated Release: Nov 15, 2010

Shooting will being this summer in Greenwood, Mississippi for the film version of The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

Greenwood will be standing in for Jackson, Mississippi; the filmmakers feel it has “a lot of similar aspects of Jackson in the 1960s,” reports the AP.

The movie stars Emma Stone as Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan and Viola Davis as Abileen. Deadline New York reported earlier that Bryce Dallas Howard will play mean girl Hilly Holbrook.

The movie will be directed by Tate Taylor, a childhood friend of Stockett’s.

The book is still at #4 on the NYT Hardcover Best Seller list after 58 weeks. That’s remarkable longevity; none of the other titles on the list have been on for longer than 4 weeks.

A trade paperback edition is scheduled for January, 2011.

The Help Kathryn Stockett Retail Price: $15.00 Paperback: 544 pages Publisher: Berkley Trade – (2011-01-04) ISBN / EAN: 0425232204 / 9780425232200

The Bronte sisters are coming. According to USA Today, they have replaced Jane Austen in the hearts of filmmakers. New versions of Jane Eyre (in the title role is the decidedly not plain Mia Wasikowska, who starred in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland this year) and Wuthering Heights (no Heathcliff yet) are due out next year.

Perhaps that explains why this video is making the rounds.

We haven’t heard any news about the movie based on Stephenie Meyer’s standalone title The Host, since the book was optioned in September. Yesterday, the sharp eyes over at the publishing blog Galley Cat noticed a casting call on an online actor’s site.

According to the site, shooting will begin in 2011. If you’re 40-year-old male with a “wild beard and eyes the colour of faded blue jeans,” you could qualify for the part of Uncle Jeb.

The book was released in trade paperback earlier this month.

The Host Stephenie Meyer Retail Price: $16.99 Paperback: 656 pages Publisher: Back Bay Books – (2010-04-13) ISBN / EAN: 0316068055 / 9780316068055

Hachette Audio; UNABR; $19.98

Books on Tape; UNABR; 9781415955864; $129

Large Print; Trade Pbk; Little, Brown; 9780316034111; $25.99

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Proving she’s down with a younger audience (or, at least, their mothers), Oprah debuted the theatrical trailer for Eclipse on her show on Friday, giving fans more to go on than the teaser trailer that was released in March.

On May 13, Oprah will host the stars of the show, Robert Pattison, Kirsten Stewart and Taylor Lautner.

Below is the trailer from YouTube; link to the official Eclipse Web site to get the full effect.

Stephenie Meyer’s novella about a fledgling vampire who appears in Eclipse releases on June 5th.

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella (Twilight Saga) Stephenie Meyer Retail Price: $13.99 Hardcover: 192 pages Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers – (2010-06-05) ISBN / EAN: 031612558X / 9780316125581

It will also be available in Spanish from Alfaguara.

La segunda vida de Bree Tanner / The Short Second Life (Spanish Edition) Stephenie Meyer Retail Price: $14.99 Paperback: 232 pages Publisher: Alfaguara – (2010-06-05) ISBN / EAN: 1616051426 / 9781616051426

Currently playing after five weeks in a limited number of American theaters is the Swedish film of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Meanwhile, plans are moving ahead for the Hollywood version; the Sunday Times of London announces that Carey Mulligan has won the role of the book’s tatooed heroine, Lisbeth Salander. The Times notes that “The new version may be relocated to Canada as a compromise for American audiences.”  Of the film currently in U.S. theaters, the Times says, “It was popular in Scandinavia but its subtitles have prevented it becoming a mainstream hit in America, where it opened last month.”

Those pesky Americans; they can’t handle subtitles or non-North-American settings. Perhaps the perception is that they also prefer their punk heroines a bit more perky (below, Noomi Rapace, in character as Salander in the Swedish movie on the left; Carey Mulligan, as herself, on the right).

It wasn’t so long ago that many wondered if Americans could handle a trilogy of books in translation, set in Sweden, with decidedly dark themes. The one believer was the publisher, Knopf. They were so confident that they announced a 100,000 copy first printing, which they increased to 150,000 before publication. That number seems laughable now; taken together, the first two volumes have sold 2.4 million copies in the U.S. and Knopf has announced a 500,000 printing for the final volume in the trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (numbers from USA Today).

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest Stieg Larsson Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 576 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2010-05-25) ISBN / EAN: 030726999X / 9780307269997

Random House Audio; UNABR; 9780739384190; $40.
OverDrive WMA Audiobook

In the current issue of Library Journal, Wilda Williams talks to Barbara Peters of Poisoned Pen as well as several other mystery editors about what’s on the horizon.

It looks like South Africa is the next Scandinavia (although the Nordic wave has not crested).

Partial proof is that a movie of Roger Smith’s Mixed Blood is set to shoot in Cape Town later this year, starring Samuel L. Jackson.

Mixed Blood: A Thriller Roger Smith Retail Price: $15.00 Paperback: 320 pages Publisher: Picador – (2009-12-22) ISBN / EAN: 0312429509 / 9780312429508

Call him “the Nicholas Sparks of nonfiction.”

Michael Lewis is on a roll. His book on the financial crisis, The Big Short, is topping best seller lists, the movie based his football book, The Blind Side grossed $287 million worldwide and won an Oscar for Sandra Bullock. The tie-in has been on best seller list for months.

Now, it looks like a movie of his book on baseball, Moneyball, will finally begin production. According to Michael Fleming, reporting for the web site, Deadline New York, Sony Pictures is talking about a July start date, starring Brad Pitt as the Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane.

The movie had been caught in production hell; last year, days before it was scheduled to start shooting under the direction of Steven Soderbergh, Sony, unhappy with the script, pulled the plug.

A new script, by Aaron Sorkin, seems to please everyone including new director Bennett Miller, whose most recent film is Capote.

All it needs now is the approval of Major League Baseball; without that, the filmmakers will not be able to use official logos and uniforms or shoot in stadiums.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Michael Lewis Retail Price: $13.95 Paperback: 320 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2004-04) ISBN / EAN: 0393324818 / 9780393324815

It will come as no surprise to Twilight fans that yesterday’s announcement of the coming publication of The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, a new Twilight novella, shot the book to #1 on both Amazon and B&N.com.

Bree Tanner, a new born vampire, appears briefly in Eclipse the book, but evidently has a larger role in the movie. Meyer says on her site that the screenwriter, director and all the lead actors read the novella before filming, so they’d better understand the characters.

Riding Bree’s coat tails is The Twilight Saga: The Official Guide. Author Stephenie Meyer noted in her announcement that Bree was originally meant to be part of the Guide, but the story turned out to be too long to include. The renewed attention to the Guide (not to be confused with the various official Twilight movie companions; the Guide is about the books) raised it to #102 on Amazon.

Originally announced in 2008 with a publication date of December that year, the Guide has been delayed ever since. The Little, Brown press release announcing Bree Tanner states, “Additionally, more information about the previously announced The Twilight Saga: The Official Guide, including publication date, will be released by the end of the year.”

Don’t cancel those orders.

The Twilight Saga: The Official Guide Stephenie Meyer Retail Price: $21.99 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers – (no date) ISBN / EAN: 0316043125 / 9780316043120

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The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella Stephenie Meyer Retail Price: $13.99 Hardcover: 192 pages Publisher: – (2010-06-05) ISBN / EAN: 031612558X / 9780316125581

In addition, an official movie companion to Eclipse (in theaters June 30th) will be released the day before the movie (no cover available yet; no doubt its unveiling will also be an event):

• The Twilight Saga Eclipse: The Official Illustrated Movie Companion
• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (June 29, 2010)
• ISBN-10: 0316087378
• ISBN-13: 978-0316087377

Steven Spielberg and his DreamWorks Studio may begin production of the movie version of Kathryn Stockett’s The Help this summer, to be directed by Tate Taylor. Included in his qualifications for the job is the fact that he and Stockett have been friends since they were five years old. In an article yesterday, the AP describes their relationship and notes that Stockett is at work on her second novel, set in Mississippi during the Depression and is involved in casting the movie.

People magazine recently offered casting suggestions:

Claire Danes as Skeeter — In the book, recent college grad Skeeter moves back to her home town, Jackson, Mississippi, in the ’60’s. She talks a group of black maids into telling her their stories in hopes of getting a book deal (and out of Jackson). People thinks Danes’ performance as Temple Grandin in the HBO movie proves she could handle this role.

Oprah Winfrey as Aibileen — she’s been in a Spielberg movie before; The Color Purple. She should be ready for a comeback!

Anne Hathaway as Hilly — People thinks it’s time for her to play the mean girl and Hilly’s plenty mean, browbeating not only her maid Aibileen, but her small circle of friends.

Mo’Nique as Minny — Aibileen’s feisty best friend deserves an equally feisty actress.

Scarlett Johansson as Celia — as an outsider, Celia is the only woman in town who will hire Minny. People notes the character does a lot of “lying around,”  which “sounds perfect” Johansson.

The Help Kathryn Stockett Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 464 pages Publisher: Putnam Adult – (2009-02-10) ISBN / EAN: 0399155341 / 9780399155345

Penguin Audio; ISBN: 9780143144182 $39.95
Downloadable from OverDrive in both eBook and audio

The next big animated 3-D kids movie on the horizon is How to Train Your Dragon, based on the book by Cressida Cowell, coming on Friday. The NYT writes that the look of the film is different from the norm,

From washed-out landscapes to minimally lighted rooms, the Nordic locations in Dragon feel more lived in and rough edged — more realistic — than one typically finds in animation.

Check it out on the movie web site.

Newmarket has released a book that explores the creation of the movie.

The Art of How to Train Your Dragon Tracey Miller-Zarneke Retail Price: $40.00 Hardcover: 160 pages Publisher: Newmarket Press – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 1557048630 / 9781557048639

And, HarperFestival has several tie-ins.

How to Train Your Dragon: Hiccup the Hero (I Can Read Book 2) Catherine Hapka Retail Price: $3.99 Paperback: 32 pages Publisher: HarperCollins – (2010-02-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061567388 / 9780061567384

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How to Train Your Dragon: Meet the Dragons (I Can Read Book 2) Catherine Hapka Retail Price: $3.99 Paperback: 32 pages Publisher: HarperCollins – (2010-02-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061567337 / 9780061567339

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How to Train Your Dragon: The Chapter Book J. E. Bright Retail Price: $4.99 Paperback: 64 pages Publisher: HarperFestival – (2010-02-01) ISBN / EAN: 006156737X / 9780061567377 .

How to Train Your Dragon: Befriending a Foe Devan Aptekar Retail Price: $3.99 Paperback: 24 pages Publisher: HarperFestival – (2010-02-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061567353 / 9780061567353

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How to Train Your Dragon: Gobber’s Guide to Battling Dragons Devan Aptekar Retail Price: $3.99 Paperback: 24 pages Publisher: HarperFestival – (2010-02-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061567361 / 9780061567360

But, its the original series, newly released in paperback, that debuts on the  3/28 NYT Childrens Series Books Best Seller list at #10.

How to Train Your Dragon Book 1 Cressida Cowell Retail Price: $5.99 Paperback: 240 pages Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers – (2010-02-01) ISBN / EAN: 0316085278 / 9780316085274

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How to Train Your Dragon Book 2: How to Be a Pirate Cressida Cowell Retail Price: $5.99 Paperback: 240 pages Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers – (2010-02-01) ISBN / EAN: 0316085286 / 9780316085281

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How to Train Your Dragon Book 3: How to Speak Dragonese Cressida Cowell Retail Price: $5.99 Paperback: 256 pages Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers – (2010-02-01) ISBN / EAN: 0316085294 / 9780316085298