Swing Sisters



Sports movies have always been a staple in Hollywood, but the game of tennis has yet to find its Hoosiers, Rudy or Seabiscuit. Smith-Hemion Productions'Gary Smith hopes to change that, now that the frequent TV producer (The Tony Awards; The Primetime Emmy Awards) has bought the film rights to Bruce Schoenfeld's The Match (Amistad, 2004), a history of the friendship between tennis legends Althea Gibson and Angela Buxton. The two women—who were shunned by other players for being, respectively, African-American and Jewish—teamed up to win the 1956 doubles championship at Wimbledon. Liza Wachter of Rabineau, Wachter, Sanford, and Harris negotiated the deal on behalf of Blauner Books Literary Agency's Andrew Blauner, who reps Schoenfeld for lit.

Books and Burglars

The Grim Reaper isn't your typical children's book narrator, but he is the sardonic voice behind Markus Zusak's hefty YA novel The Book Thief (Knopf, Mar.). Newly optioned by Fox 2000 for Karen Rosenfelt (The Devil Wears Prada; Charlotte's Web, due in December) to produce, the Australian novelist's epic WWII tale follows nine-year-old Liesel Meminger and her foster parents in a small town in Nazi Germany. Taught to read with a copy of The Grave Digger's Handbook that she filches at her brother's funeral, Liesel continues to find solace by burying herself in appropriated books. Zusak is repped by Inkwell Management's Catherine Drayton, who is based in Sydney.

Briefs...

Universal Pictures has optioned the rights to Ken Kalfus's "The Moment They Were Waiting For," first published in Harper's magazine in September 2003, in which a killer's execution sets off a bizarre supernatural effect—enabling the world's population to learn the exact day on which they will die. John Crowley (Intermission) is directing from a script by Matthew Ryan Hoge (The United States of Leland).... Uma Thurman will headline In Bloom, an adaptation of Laura Kasischke's The Life Before Her Eyes (Harcourt), the tale of a wife and mother who must come to terms with repressed memories of surviving a Columbine-like shooting two decades earlier. Bloom will begin production in August, with director Vadim Perelman (House of Sand and Fog) at the helm.

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