This week in Page to Screen—PW's weekly column tracking film rights circulating and sold in Hollywood—Steve Fisher shops John Connolly's first YA novel and AP Watt goes out with a new one from the author of The Last King of Scotland.
Steve Fisher at APA has just started shopping film rights to John Connolly's first YA novel, The Gates. Emily Bestler at Atria bought the novel from Darley Anderson at the Darley Anderson Literary Agency in what Fisher called a "significant" deal; Fisher said the book was "an even hotter" title in the U.K. (Irishman Connolly is best known for his series of thrillers featuring the ex-policeman Charlie Parker.) In the novel, a group of novice satan worshippers accidentally turn a suburban home into a portal for demons. After the demonic slip-up the job of saving the world falls to a neighborhood boy, and his dog. The manuscript, according to some scouts, was generating buzz in London and Fisher confirmed he's been fielding interested calls from both studios and scouts.
At the British agency AP Watt one mansucript which was making people take notice at LBF is Giles Foden's Turbulence. The new book, by the author of The Last King of Scotland, will be published this summer in the U.K. by Faber and Faber--and will bow in the U.S. from Knopf--and is a WWII-set drama that follows a group of scientists, working for the government, tasked with predicting the weather conditions around the English Channel days before the D-Day invasion is scheduled. Specifically, the story focuses on the reclusive pacifist and chief scientist grappling with the job, and the young science prodigy sent to tap him for his knowledge. Christine Glover is handling the film rights and Derek Johns, also of AP Watt, handled the print deals.
