T.S. SPIVET To Open Dec. 19

The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet, called a “high-profile” 3-D adaptation by The Hollywood Reporter, of a 2009 novel, will be released on Dec. 19. UPDATE: The U.S. release date is no longer firm and is now listed for some time in 2014

9781594202179The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larson (Penguin Press) was a high-profile debut when it was published, reportedly acquired for a $900,000 advance, excerpted in Vanity Fair, and reviewed widely.

Told from the point of view of T.S. Spivet, a 12-year-old rancher’s son, who travels to Washington D.C. on his own to receive an award for the maps he obsessively draws, it features hand-drawn marginalia that spill over the pages of Larsen’s book. Reviewing it, Ron Charles in the Washington Post noted T.S.’s “… guileless asides and antique-looking drawings fill the margins … mixing the graphic intensity of Nick Bantock’s Griffin & Sabine with the ironic footnotes of Dave Eggers and David Foster Wallace” and predicted that anyone who paged through the book would take it home. Like other reviewers, however, he felt it did not live up to its promising beginning.

Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie), the movie stars newcomer  Kyle Catlett as T.S. and Helena Bonham Carter as his mother.

Reviewing the movie when it premiered at the San Sebastian Film Festival, The Hollywood Reporter predicted, “Despite its flaws, international arthouse success seems assured for this amusing, poignant and visually stunning take on a child prodigy’s attempts to understand his weird family and the even weirder wider world.” Variety notes a promotional challenge, “As with Hugo, however, guessing the target audience will be tricky.”

A trade pbk. movie tie-in is currently listed for publication in May, but now that the release date, of Dec. 19 has been announced, we can expect to see it earlier.

As the trailer indicates, below, the movie T.S. is younger than the book’s character and has been changed from a cartographer to an inventor.

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