Page to Screen: Waiting on 'Sawtelle'
By Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 9/10/2008 1:59:00 PM
Those eagerly awaiting word of a film option for Ecco's runaway summer bestseller The Story of Edgar Sawtelle should settle in, because it may be awhile. PW has heard that 48-year-old debut author David Wroblewski has made an unusual request—he's asked would-be producers to pitch their film ideas to him in person so he can choose who’s most deserving of the film rights. The unusual (and demanding) move, if nothing else, will make a quick acquisition unlikely.
On the shopping front, PW has heard that Bob Bookman at CAA has just taken out film rights for Francine Prose’s forthcoming novel, Golden Grove. The novel, due out Tuesday from Harper, is Prose’s 15th and follows a 13-year-old who, wiling away her summer in her father’s upstate New York bookstore a year after her older sister’s suicide, finds solace with the high school boy her sister was romancing. Only one of Prose’s novels, Households Saints, has made it to the big screen; that film was released in 1993 as an indie starring Tracey Ullman and Lili Taylor.
In a deal that just closed, Bill Contardi, on behalf of the Virginia Kidd Agency, has sold film rights to E.E. Doc Smith’s pulp sci-fi series from the 1930s, Lensman, to Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment. Rumors have floated as far back as January about Howard’s interest in the property, but Contardi confirmed that the deal has just closed after negotiations lagged for months. Imagine optioned all seven books in the series about an intergalactic law enforcement/militia—the lensmen are the officers—charged with preserving civilization. After various fits and starts, Contardi said that Imagine has a screenwriter on the project, which is being fast tracked.
