Making Waves of Grief
In his upcoming novel The Killing Sea, to be published by Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing this December, Richard Lewis tackles the 2004 Asian tsunami. Fox 2000 has just picked up the book's film rights in a preemptive deal for Scott Free, sibling directors Ridley and Tony Scott's production company, to produce. Lewis's fictional story focuses on two teenagers, Ruslan, an Indonesian boy, and Sarah, an American girl, as they search through the post-disaster rubble, he for his missing father and she for medication for a sick brother. The Gersh Agency's Sarah Self negotiated the deal on behalf of the Trident Media Group's Scott Miller, who reps Lewis for lit.
Playing Doctor
Although it's a condemned medical practice now, psychosurgery was all the rage in post-WWII America, thanks to Dr. Walter Freeman. As Jack El-Hai details in The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness (Wiley, 2005), the brain doc made common the transorbital lobotomy—a process that often involved an ice pick and a carpenter's hammer—in an attempt to improve the welfare of his patients. It was a no-brainer for WGBH, Boston's public television station, to option the title for development as a documentary in The American Experienceseries. Station execs decided Freeman—on whom the unyielding lobotomist in the 1982 Jessica Lange film Frances was partly based—would make for a compelling feature biopic as well. Brandt & Hochman's Bill Contardi negotiated the deal on behalf of literary agent Laura Langlie.
Briefs
Actress Lili Taylor (The Notorious Bettie Page) has optioned the rights to Lisa Shea's Hula (Norton, 1994) and written a rough draft of an adaptation. Set in the early 1960s, Shea's debut novel addresses the budding sexuality of two young sisters and is set almost entirely in the backyard of their suburban Virginia home.... Although Victorian-era space pirate adventure sounds like an oxymoron, the characterization perfectly describes Philip Reeve's Larklight, which is to be published by Bloomsbury USA Children's Books this October—and is Warner Bros.' latest film option. Denise Di Novi (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) will produce the witty tale of Arthur Mumsby and his irritating sister, Myrtle, as they attempt to foil a madman bent on world destruction.
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