EarlyWord

The big screen debut of the week is Captain America: Civil War, opening May 6 and hoping to knock The Jungle Book out of first place (Jungle Book is not likely to be unseated this weekend, according to box office prognosticators).

USA Today gives the Captain 3.5 stars out of 4. Entertainment Weekly gives it a strong A- saying it offers “a sense of fun and joy missing from that other recent superhero smackdown” and goes on to comment that what is “essentially a third Avengers movie [is] the best one yet.”

Comic Book Resources agrees, “it’s not just breathtaking in its visuals, it’s heartbreaking in its content, making [it] one of the best Marvel movies yet.” The Guardian rounds up the praise with a 4 out of 5 starred review.

There are some doubters in the mix however, as typified by Indiewire‘s pointed C grade. They say “The Marvel Cinematic Universe doesn’t get much better than this — and that’s a big problem.”

Tie-ins include a re-print of the graphic novel Civil War Movie Edition, Mark Millar and illustrated by Steve McNiven (Hachette/Marvel) and Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War: The Deluxe Junior Novel, Marvel (Hachette/Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; in paperback as well).

The Family Fang opens on May 6 too. While based on the librarian-favorite novel by Kevin Wilson (HarperCollins/Ecco, 2011), it unfortunately has all the hallmarks of being a minor film for the studios, opening in a limited number of theaters on April 29, followed by a simultaneous VOD release and a wider, but not very wide, theatrical roll-out.

Entertainment Weekly gives it a B, saying director Jason Bateman provides a “sensitivity that the story’s sour whimsy doesn’t quite deserve” while People magazine makes it one of their picks of the week, saying, “Nicole Kidman delivers a strong turn … The Surprise is Batemen … Best known for his dry wit, he can also deliver the tears.”

A tie-in has not been announced, but the paperback edition carries a “Now major motion picture” sticker.

The final season of Wallander begins airing on May 8 and will run until the 22nd on PBS stations. Starring Kenneth Branagh the show is based on Henning Mankell’s Swedish crime series. New to the cast this year is Harry Hadden-Paton, who viewers last saw as Edith’s fiancé, Bertie Pelham, on Downton Abbey.

Mankell died last year. At that time Branagh told the BBC:

In life and in art Henning Mankell was a man of passionate commitment. I will miss his provocative intelligence and his great personal generosity. Aside from his stringent political activism, and his decades of work in Africa, he also leaves an immense contribution to Scandinavian literature. His loving family, and those privileged to know him, together with readers from all over the world, will mourn a fine writer and a fine man.

Lee Daniels has optioned the film and TV rights to Men We Reaped, Jesmyn Ward (Macmillan/Bloomsbury, 2013).

As reported in Entertainment Weekly, the executive producer of Empire and director of The Butler has not released plans but says  Ward’s critically-acclaimed memoir could not be in better hands.

EW calls it “a natural fit” pointing out that “Daniels is responsible for racially-conscious films like Monster’s Ball, The Butler, and Precious.” Ward continues to write powerfully and with great resonance about race in America.

Her next project, says EW, is The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race (S&S/Scribner, Aug. 2, 2016), an anthology of essays and poems that address the past, current, and future racism in the United States. Contributors include Edwidge Danticat, Claudia Rankine, Natasha Trethewey, Isabel Wilkerson, and Kevin Young.

As we predicted on Wednesday, Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible (PRH/Random House; BOT; OverDrive Sample) is a bestseller, taking the #8 spot on the USA Today list.

In a spotlight story, the paper charts the novel’s rise, pointing out this is the highest ranking Sittenfeld has reached on the list, her debut Prep peaked at #34 and American Wife topped off at #35.

The novel makes the list in the face of very mixed reviews. While it is a LibraryReads selection, an Indie Next pick, and a People magazine’s “Book of the Week,” it was excoriated by Michiko Kakutani in the daily NYT. Even USA Today ‘s book editor Jocelyn Mcclure, who gave it 3 out of 4-star, gives it a backhanded compliment that it’s “amusing if crass.”

Then came the early posting of the NYT Book Review‘s rave review declaring, “not since Clueless, which transported Emma to Beverly Hills, has Austen been so delightedly interpreted.”

That is clearly a sentiment that readers have endorsed. Holds are skyrocketing, reaching double-digit ratios at some libraries and amassing long queues at others.

We’ll learn later today where it lands on the NYT list. We expect to see it in the top five. [UPDATE: It debuted #5 on the NYT 5/8 Hardcover Fiction list]

Emma Cline’s The Girls (Random House; Random House Audio; OverDrive Sample) is the #1 Indie Next pick for June.

“Evie Boyd is a lonely 14-year-old adjusting to her parents’ recent divorce and an emotional break with her childhood best friend. She encounters a wild and enchanting group of girls and is immediately drawn into their world of reckless abandon. Seduced by their thrilling, cult-like family hidden in the California hills, Evie finds herself pulled into events that will lead to unspeakable violence. Cline’s captivating prose strips bare the deep desires and vulnerability of teenage Evie as she struggles for acceptance. The Girls is an enthralling and haunting novel that will linger with readers long after the last page.” —Tarah Jennings, Mitzi’s Books, Rapid City, SD

The was also a favorite during February’s GalleyChat and was an early pick as a 2016 hot title (see our roundup of titles On Most of 2016’s Most Anticipated Lists).

The book is so buzzy that Entertainment Weekly did one of their  “exclusive” cover reveals for it, the NYT reported on the seven figure bidding war as well and the news that the film rights sold before the book even went to auction. The Indie Next nod is a reminder, that if you haven’t already, you can be one step ahead of your customers by downloading and reading it now.

The complete list of picks highlights new books by Anton DiSclafani, Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Emma Straub, and Terry Tempest Williams among others.

Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking, Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook (HMH/Rux Martin), has won the 2016 James Beard Book of the Year award.

Chef Solomonov is no stranger to the Beard honors. In 2011 he won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic. Now his debut cookbook, which highlights the pleasures of Israeli food and profiles his restaurant and life journey, gets similar accolades.

The James Beard Awards, billed as the Oscars of the food world, are given for 14 book categories (as well as for chefs, journalists, TV shows and more). Zahav also took home the International book award.

Deborah Madison won the Cookbook Hall of Fame category. Her most recent title is The New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (RH/Ten Speed).

The very timely Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning) by Marion Nestle (Oxford UP) won for Writing and Literature while The Beetlebung Farm Cookbook by Chris Fischer with Catherine Young (Hachette/Little, Brown) took the prize for American Cooking. V Is for Vegetables: Inspired Recipes & Techniques for Home Cooks — from Artichokes to Zucchini by  Michael Anthony with Dorothy Kalins (Hachette/Little, Brown) won for Vegetable Focused and Vegetarian.

Best seller The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, J. Kenji López-Alt (Norton) topped the General Cooking category. It won the IACP Cookbook of the Year award earlier this month (see our coverage here).

Other than The Food Lab there are no overlapping winners between the two highly regarded food awards.

The full list of James Beard winners is available online.

Netflix and the BBC are set to produce a new four-episode adaptation of Richard Adams’ 1972 novel, Watership Down (S&S/Scribner).

Deadline Hollywood reports it will star John Boyega, James McAvoy, Nicholas Hoult, Ben Kingsley, and Gemma Arterton, directed by Noam Murro (300: Rise Of The Empire). The CG animation team is headed by Pete Dodd (Fantastic Mr Fox).

The fantasy adventure novel, much like Tolkien’s The Hobbit, has been a crossover hit with both kids and adults for decades that has been adapted twice before, as a hit movie in 1978 and as a British/Canadian TV series 20 years later. The story follows a group of anthropomorphized rabbits as they escape the destruction of their home (as foreseen by one of their members) and seek a new place to live, all the while facing great danger.

Recalling the darkness of the 1978 adaptation (more on that in a Guardian interview with the author from 2014), the A.V. Club declares that Netflix and the BBC are on course to “ensure that no generation of children goes without the character-building experience of waking up screaming at the thought of being messily devoured by rabbits, or drowned in pastoral fields of blood … [with a] star-studded cast lined up to appear in the ongoing nightmares of every child whose parent puts on “the cute bunny movie” and leaves them to their fates.”

The series is still in development, so there is no word yet on an air date.

Our chat has now ended. You can read it below.

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Director Oliver Stone’s interpretation of the Edward Snowden story, based on Luke Harding’s The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man, (RH/Vintage; trade pbk tie-in, 8/23/16), titled simply Snowden, is set for release on Sept. 16.

The trailer released today, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the title role, gives a taste:

Also in the movie are Shailene Woodley as Snowden’s girlfriend and Zachary Quinto as journalist Glenn Greenwald.

Curiously,  a rival project based on Greenwald’s  book,  No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State (Macmillan/Holt/Metropolitan Books; Macmillan Audio) was announced two years ago.

Even curiouser, as we reported earlier, there has also been a rivalry between the authors of the books each of the films are based on. In an interview in the Financial Times, Greenwald dismissed Harding’s as a “bullshit book … written by someone who has never met or even spoken to Edward Snowden.”

A letter aimed at preventing next week’s publication of Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me by Ron Miscavige (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Macmillan Audio) has caused the book to rise on Amazon’s sales rankings.

The book’s UK publisher, Humfrey Hunter of Silvertail Books tells The Hollywood Reporter, “My plans for the book haven’t changed at all since I received the letter. Full legal due diligence has been carried out on the manuscript, and I am both confident in its integrity and very proud that Silvertail is publishing it. Ron’s story is an important one, and he is a brave man to be telling it.”

The letter sent to Silvertail, reproduced in The Hollywood Reporter‘s story, indicates the US publisher has been contacted as well, “We also trust that St Martin’s Press will have provided you with copies of correspondence from the Church’s US representatives.”

Ron Miscavige will appear on ABC’s “20/20” this Friday.

Megyn Kelly, Fox News anchor and host of The Kelly File, announces on Facebook that she will publish her memoir this fall.

Kelly’s profile has risen lately thanks to Donald Trump’s attacks.

Everybody should boycott the @megynkelly show. Never worth watching. Always a hit on Trump! She is sick, & the most overrated person on tv.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2016

Trump is not sticking to the boycott. In a new twist, Deadline Hollywood reports that Kelly will interview the candidate in her first prime time special, Megyn Kelly Presents, airing during sweeps week on May 17.

The untitled book (Harper: ISBN 9780062494603) is available to preorder through library vendors and will release on 11/16/2015, one week after the presidential election.

According to the publisher the book will detail Kelly’s rise in journalism, her career at Fox, and the 2016 primary.

The adaptation of Deborah Moggach’s novel Tulip Fever (PRH/Delacorte, 2000) was filmed back in 2014, so yesterday’s announcement of a July 15 release date seems sudden.

The industry news site IndieWire suggests that the Weinstein Company has held back the release for a reason, as they are known for “sitting on movies when they don’t make the grade” also citing that “American audiences are still waiting to see the WWII tale Suite Francaise starring Michelle Williams and Matthias Schoenaerts”

A trailer has been released for the film, starring Oscar-winning actress Alicia Vikander, along with Christoph Waltz, Dane DeHaan, Jack O’Connell, Holliday Grainger, Cara Delevingne, Judi Dench and, Zach Galafianakis. No tie-in has been announced.

Vikander also stars in the film adaptation of The Light Between Oceans, set to open on Labor Day.

Two long-awaited Stephen King adaptations are scheduled for release next year. Yet another has just been announced for this year.

As the fan site Slash Film says, “Everyone has been so focused on the currently filming adaptation of The Dark Tower, the upcoming adaptation of It, and the ever-in-development big screen version of The Stand that we completely forgot that another Stephen King adaptation was on the way.”

Published in 2006, movie rights to Cell sold quickly but then the project bounced around to various studios and director.

There may be a reason this adaptation has been overlooked. Slashfilm describes the plot as “built around a ridiculous premise that feels like a parody of a Stephen King book … One day, everyone using a cell phone is driven insane and begins to viciously attack anyone near them … Cell is lesser King, but it’s gnarly and weird and a brisk read.”

It is set for release on Ultra VOD on June 10th before simultaneous theatrical and regular VOD release on July 8.

The trailer, starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson has just been released. No tie-ins have been announced.

[UPDATE: Eerily, the Cell trailer seems to no longer be available. The YouTube link is here, but at the time of this posting, it didn’t work]

The finalists for the Hugo Awards, which along with the Nebula Awards are the Oscars of Science Fiction and Fantasy, have been announced. Among picks, controversy continues as the Rabid Puppies group seeks to stuff the ballot box once again. The result, claims George R.R. Martin on his blog is, “to say the least, a mixed bag. A lot of good books and stories, writers and artists… cheek by jowl with some stuff that is considerably less worthy.”

The Best Novel category seems to have escaped the takeover. The finalists are: Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie (Hachette/Orbit), The Cinder Spires: the Aeronaut’s Windlass, Jim Butcher (Penguin/Roc), The Fifth Season, N. K. Jemisin (Hachette/Orbit), the number one LibraryReads pick for May last year, Uprooted, Naomi Novik (PRH/RH/Del Rey), and  Seveneves, Neal Stephenson (HC/William Morrow), also a May 2015 LibraryReads pick.

Other well-known and highly regarded names receiving nods include Lois McMaster Bujold (for Best Novella), Neil Gaiman (for Best Graphic Story), Stephen King (for Best Novelette), and Brandon Sanderson (for Best Novella). Star Wars and The Martian both got nods for for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form).

However, he full list of nominees reveals that the divisive gamesmanship continues. New Republic writes “The Hugo Awards are still a mess” and The Guardian reports, “the Puppies and their supporters have redoubled their efforts to ‘game”’the awards … out of 80 recommendations posted by [Rabid Puppies] 62 have received sufficient votes to make the ballot.”

Author John Scalzi, one of the newly announced Los Angeles Times Critics at Large and three-time Hugo winner is less concerned, writing for the paper he says that this year’s ballot stuffing was largely blunted in the big categories by more votes from the anti-Puppies side and that the Puppies can take little credit for successfully lobbying for titles already widely considered shoo-ins. The Puppies he says, are “running in front of an existing parade and claiming to lead it.”

Announced on the Pottermore Web site on Tuesday,  Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay, will be published in the U.S. by Scholastic on November 19, the day after the release of the movie. Presumably, it is being held off until after the movie debuts to avoid spoilers.

Meanwhile, the original Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Scholastic; 9780545850568), a faux Hogwarts textbook, is only available from used book retailers.

More may be coming. At the time of the announcement of the movie, it was also announced that Warner Bros has agreements in place with Scholastic to “publish children’s movie tie-in books for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and its sequels, as well as tie-in books based on the original eight Harry Potter films.” and for adult tie-ins with HarperCollins that “will delve into, and behind the scenes of, the richly textured film and its sequels to enhance fans’ enjoyment of the new stories. Books will include details about how the films were made, the process of art and design, interviews with the cast and crew, and interactive formats such as colouring and postcard books.”

Rowling caused excitement earlier this year when she gave fans the impression that Harry Potter 8 would be published this summer. In fact, the book is the script of the play, titled Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts I & II (Scholastic) set to debut London’s Palace Theatre on July 30th. According to the announcement, it is  “based on an original new story by JK Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany. It is officially the eighth story in Harry Potter canon and a new play by Jack Thorne.”

A new trailer for Fantastic Beast was released earlier this month.

If someone mentions the NYT review of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible (PRH/Random House; BOT; OverDrive Sample), be sure to ask them which one.

After daily NYT reviewer Michiko Kakutani rained all over the Austen homage, the NYT Book Review just released their take, days ahead of the issue coming out this Sunday. Not only is it  far more positive, it’s a rave.

NYT contributor Sarah Lyall sums up her review with “Three cheers for Curtis Sittenfeld and her astute, sharp and ebullient anthropological interest in the human condition” and writes that the novel is “very much the best” of the titles in the Austen Project and “not since Clueless, which transported Emma to Beverly Hills, has Austen been so delightedly interpreted.”

Firmly planting herself in the “read this” camp, Lyall says:

“Sittenfeld, whose four previous novels include the extraordinary American Wife, a devastating portrait of a Laura Bush-like first lady, is the ideal modern-day reinterpreter. Her special skill lies not just in her clear, clean writing, but in her general amusement about the world, her arch, pithy, dropped-mike observations about behavior, character and motivation. She can spot hypocrisy, cant, self-contradiction and absurdity 10 miles away. She’s the one you want to leave the party with, so she can explain what really happened.”

Based on growing holds in libraries and Amazon sales rankings, the book is headed for best seller lists, which may be the reason the NYT released this review early.