The movie Philomena, based on The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, by UK journalist Martin Sixsmith (Macmillan U.K., 2009), received such great buzz at the Venice Film festival that the Weinstein Co., which has U.S. distribution rights, quickly  set a limited release date of this Christmas, qualifying it and star Judi Dench for Oscar nominations, followed by a wider release in January.

The book recounts Sixsmith’s efforts to help a woman find the son she had  been forced to give up for adoption fifty years earlier. The movie, directed by Stephen Frears (The Queen), stars Dench as the mother, Philomena Lee and Steve Coogan as Sixsmith. 

The book will be published here in September as a trade paperback tie-in, titled Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search  (Penguin), with a foreword by Dench. UPDATE: both the movie release and the pub date for the tie-in has been moved to 11/27/13.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 3rd, 2013 at 1:22 pm and is filed under Books & Movies, Nonfiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.