Hollywood Reader

This week: The Devil Does Dallas, and a dinosaur lands in the Southwest. Plus, will a YA author extend her winning streak in film?

a second time, Fox 2000 has optioned The Devil in the Junior League, a revealing look at Texas bluebloods by former Junior Leaguer Linda Francis Lee. Laura Hopper (View from the Top) will produce. In 2002, the same studio scooped up the film rights to that other demonic work of fiction "not" about Anna Wintour, Lauren Weisberger's The Devil Wears Prada (Doubleday). While Weisberger may be persona non grata in the Condé Nast cafeteria, Lee will likely still be welcome in its Texas equivalent (whatever that is). Lee's agent, Amy Berkower of Writers House, calls it a "kinder, gentler comic novel," rather than a scorched-earth satire. In it, Frede, a 28-year-old wife struggling to get pregnant, discovers her husband has drained her bank account and run off with another woman. Broke, she turns to her neighbor, a nouveau riche lawyer who agrees to represent her if she can turn his vulgar wife into Junior League material—Clueless goes to Southfork. Berkower hasn't submitted the book to publishers yet, but notes that Ballantine, publisher of Lee's other novels, has an option. Brillstein-Grey's Kassie Evashevski did the film deal.

in Tyrannosaur Canyon (Forge, Sept. 2005), out now from CAA's Matt Snyder. Douglas Preston, who, along with frequent collaborator Lincoln Child, forms one of thrillerdoms more successful partnerships (bestsellers include Thunderheadand Brimstone [both Warner Books]). The latest effort from Preston (writing solo this time) is about a New Mexico vet who becomes an assassin's target after discovering the location of a fully formed T. rex. If that sounds like a Crichton-worthy premise to you, film folks might agree. Preston and Child—writing alone or together—seem to have set up as many projects around town as their more famous rival, from 1998's Riptide (Fox) to 2002's Utopia (just out of options from Warner Bro.). Despite Hollywood's healthy appetite for the team's high-concept adventure-thrillers, the two still haven't had their Jurassic Parkmoment—only their first outing, 1995's The Relic (good book, bad movie) has made it to the screen.

At press time, several major studios were reportedly preparing bids for Holly Black's latest YA novel, Valiant (S&S, due out in June), in which a 17-year-old girl runs away to New York and meets up with a gang of odd squatters who've set up camp in the city's subway system. Manhattan straphangers aren't known for their good manners, but even the most jaded commuter might give up a seat to Valiant's heroine, who encounters a goat-hooved woman, trolls and other assorted creatures. The Jim Henson Company holds film rights to Black's previous Tithe(S&S, 2002, which PWcalled "a gripping read" in a starred review) and the bestselling Spiderwick Chronicles, which she co-wrote with Tony DiTerlizzi, are set up at Nickelodeon. The Gotham Group's Ellen Goldsmith-Vein represents Black for film.

Correction: John Huddy's Storming Las Vegaswill be published by Ballantine, not Villard, as reported last week.

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