Hollywood Reader
This week: A look at book-to-film projects in the works in 2006
by Michelle Kung -- Publishers Weekly, 1/2/2006
Hanks's Take on a Texan
Tom Hanks starring in this summer's adaptation of The Da Vinci Code? Old news. While director Ron Howard's film of Dan Brown's bestseller is unspooling in theaters, two-time Oscar winner Hanks will likely be headlining and producing an adaptation of George Crile's Charlie Wilson's War (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003). The true-life tale of Wilson, a Texas congressman and boozy womanizer who bounced back from an early 1980s scandal by successfully persuading the CIA to train and arm Afghan resistance fighters to keep the Soviet Union at bay, was acquired by Universal in a seven-figure deal and adapted by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing).
Doctor Depp
Also attached to play a deadbeat with (kinda) redeeming qualities in 2006 is Johnny Depp, who will star in an adaptation of Gregory David Roberts's Shantaram (St. Martin's, 2004). The story of an Australian addict who escapes from prison and reinvents himself as a doctor in the slums of Bombay is being directed by Aussie helmer Peter Weir (Master and Commander) and distributed domestically by Warner Bros.
88 Keys and More
Several other book-to-film adaptations greenlit for the coming year include a Halle Berry–produced film of Kathryn Talalay's Composition in Black and White: The Life of Philippa Schuyler (Oxford Univ. Press, 1995), a biopic about 1940s biracial child piano prodigy, starring R&B songstress Alicia Keys in the lead role; Nicolas Cage and Julianne Moore in Sony's Next, a Lee Tamahori (Die Another Day)–directed adaptation of Philip K. Dick's sci-fi short story "The Golden Man"; and Paramount's Benjamin Button, Eric Roth's vision for F. Scott Fitzgerald's tale "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"—first published in Collier's magazine in 1922—about a man who ages backward and finds himself falling for a 30-year-old woman when he's 50. Originally slated to start production in October 2005 (with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in talks to star), the fable-like film was delayed due to director David Fincher's decision to first film Zodiac, a serial killer drama with Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr.
Correction: The Vow coauthor Mitzi Miller (Hollywood Reader, Nov. 21) is repped for lit by Victoria Sanders of Victoria Sanders & Associates.
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