Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Where’d You Go, Bernadette starring two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett will start filming July 2017, reports Austin360.

The movie is based on the novel of the same name by Maria Semple (Hachette, 2012). Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (500 Days of Summer and The Fault in Our Stars) wrote the screenplay.

Fans of the book will have to wait to find out who will play Bernadette’s 15-year-old daughter, Bee Branch, the story’s narrator.

Semple won an Alex Award for the book in 2013. It spent a few weeks on the NYT Hardcover Bestseller list, and many more in trade paperback, hitting a high of #2.

As we noted earlier, Semple has another title headed to a screen. Julia Roberts will star in HBO’s adaptation of her newest novel, Today Will Be Different (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample).

No stranger to TV herself, Semple, who worked on Beverly Hills, 90210, Mad About You, Suddenly Susan, and Arrested Development, will write the script, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The NBC series adapting Charlaine Harris’s Midnight, Texas trilogy will air in late summer. It will introduce viewers to the world Bustle calls “Twin Peaks with vampires” on Tuesday, July 25, 10-11 p.m.

François Arnaud (The Borgias) stars as Manfred, described by Deadline as “a charming, powerful psychic who can communicate with spirits and finds safety in Midnight [the fictional town in Texas] surrounding himself with both human and supernatural allies.” Dylan Bruce (Orphan Black), Parisa Fitz-Henley (Luke Cage), Arielle Kebbel (The Vampire Diaries), Jason Lewis (Sex and the City), Peter Mensah (True Blood), Sarah Ramos (Parenthood), and Yul Vazquez (Captain Phillips) are also in the cast.

The trilogy includes:

Midnight Crossroads (PRH/Ace, 2014; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample)

Day Shift (PRH/Ace, 2015; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample)

Night Shift (PRH/Ace, 2016; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample)

Tor. com gives the summary:

“the story is wacky, ya’ll. Immensely wacky, but, like, in a fun way. Midnight Crossroad starts off as a book about a pawnshop owner’s dead girlfriend and turns into a murder conspiracy involving white supremacists. Day Shift is ostensibly about the suspicious circumstances in which one of Manfred’s clients [he is the psychic] dies and ends up with a pack of weretigers wandering through town and vampires hunting a telepath visiting his grandpappy. Night Shift goes from people and animals killing themselves at the crossroads to a magic sex ritual with a pitstop at a subplot with a hangry Etruscan-literate vampire.”

A new trailer adds a bit more to first one, released in October:

The latest Disney adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, which opened this weekend, was the blockbuster the studio longed for. Weeks before it opened, it helped promote books, putting one of the tie-ins, Lost in a Book by Jennifer Donnelly (Hachette/Disney Press) on the NYT Middle Grade Best Sellers List.

Disney is at work on many more live-action adaptations of previous animated hits, including a new version of Dumbo, with Tim Burton directing and Danny DeVito voicing the star.

Taking advantage of the Disney hit, DreamWorks Animation released a trailer for their adaptation of Marla Frazee’s The Boss Baby using the phrase, “A Tale NOT As Old As Time” and a couple of images to emphasize the reference.

Also just released is a trailer for another sure-fire book-promoting hit, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul!, based on Jeff Kinney’s book series.

Darrin Alert: the movie, and the trailer, feature a new cast.

It premieres May 19.

For a full listing of movie tie-ins, check our list of tie-ins to upcoming films, recently updated with tie-ins to 2017’s most anticipated kid’s movies.

Perform Ann Cleeves’s
“Shetland Murder Mystery Game”
in Your Library!

To celebrate the forthcoming publication
of Ann Cleeves’s COLD EARTH
(book #7 in the Shetland Island series, on sale 4/18),
we are offering librarians a
free Shetland Murder Mystery Game,
plus three Shetland series books to be used as prizes!

Developed by Ann and based around a traditional
Shetland Sunday tea, the script is designed
to be read by four actors.
Directions on how to stage the event are also included.

Download the murder mystery game PDF and click here for more information about book prizes.

The news media is aflutter today over the announcement that Donald Trump’s first wife, Ivana is publishing a book. ABC’s Good Morning America comments that the move is one of many raising the question of whether the Trump family is “Profiting from the Presidency?”

Raising Trump
Ivana Trump
Hardcover | September 12, 2017
Biography & Autobiography / Rich & Famous
$26.99 USD, $35.99 CAD
ISBN 9781501177286, 1501177281

Daughter Ivanka Trump’s book, originally announced for the fall, was later rescheduled for next year.

Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success
Ivanka Trump
Hardcover ; May 2, 2017
Business & Economics / Women In Business
$26.00 USD, $35.00 CAD
ISBN 9780735211322, 0735211329

Many names will be missing from the second English-language adaptation of the Millennium series, following 2011’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Sony has announced that the movie will be released on October 5, 2018, but that neither of the two leads, Rooney Mara or Daniel Craig will return.

Also missing from the credits is the originator of the series of novels, Stieg Larsson. This second movie will be based on the fourth book in the series, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, written by David Lagercrantz after Larsson’s death.

The date of the movie release was announced at a launch party for the fifth book in the Millennium series, also by Lagercrantz, titled in Swedish The Man who Chased His Shadow (Mannen som sökte sin skugga;cover at left), but listed in the US as Untitled Millennium Book 5 (PRH/Knopf, 9/12/17). The Swedish publication The Local describes the plot,”[Lisbeth Salander]  will begin the novel serving a short sentence at a women’s prison, where she is attempting to avoid conflicts between prisoners, and the tale will develop into a story of ‘state abuse, honour problems and shadows from a childhood that still haunts Salander’.”

There’s been no explanation about why the movie will skip ahead to the fourth book in the series, but  Sony, whose options on the rights to the Larsson books ran out in 2015, may have decided to avoid dealing with Larsson’s famously contentious estate.

Today, J.K. Rowling fans are pondering the meaning of the title of her next book, which she revealed yesterday in an online contest.

The next in the Cormoran Strike series, written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, it’s titled Lethal White. So far the leading guess is that the title refers to a rare genetic disorder among horses.

At this point, there’s no ISBN and it’s not listed on wholesaler or retailer sites. Rowling did not give a publication date, but said that she is at work on chapter 23. Based on that, there is a slim possibility that it will be released this fall, which would be good timing since the first in the TV series adaptation of the books is expected to air on HBO later this year.

She has plenty of other projects to occupy her time, including the screenplays for the upcoming Fantastic Beasts movies, with the second scheduled for November, 2018. There may also be another non-HP book in the works under her own name, as she teased back in December.

Yesterday’s release of an updated version of the faux Hogwarts text book, Fantastic Beasts, also set the internet ablaze because it contains some new details about the HP universe.

This chat has ended. Join us for the next one on Tuesday, April 4, from 4 to 5 pm, ET. Details here.

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EDITORS NOTE:

We’re pleased to welcome back Lisa Von Drasek as EarlyWord‘s Kids Correspondent, now that she has completed her responsibilities on the Caldecott committee. Below, she gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the YMA announcement day at Midwinter.

Nora, EarlyWord: Welcome back, Lisa! We’d love to know everything you can tell us about the Caldecott committee discussions.

Lisa: Nice try, Nora, but the work of the committee is confidential. I can’t tell you the titles we discussed, how we came to our short list, or anything about the specific votes.

Nora, EarlyWord: Got it. Let’s try something else. You were in the room when the winners were announced. What was it like as people began to realize John Lewis was about to make history by winning an unprecedented four awards for March, Book 3 (IDW/Top Shelf)?

(more…)

The Academy Awards ceremony often confounds expectations, no more dramatically than it did last night when, just as the La La Land producers were celebrating their win for Best Picture, it was announced that the winner was actually Moonlight.

Expectations that books would take center stage were also confounded. In spite of multiple nominations for films adapted from published material, only Fences, based on the August Wilson play, won a major award, for Viola Davis as Best Supporting Actress.

Even the category of adapted screenplay did not net a win for books. In fact the winner isn’t even  based on a published work, but on an unpublished play that was written as a drama school project, Moonlight.

Despite five nominations, including Best Director, Arrival, based on a story by Ted Chiang, won just one Oscar, for Sound Editing and the books that showed the largest sales boosts from the nominations, Hidden Figures, Lion, and A Man Called Ove, went home empty-handed.

Those books are still doing well, however. The memoir that is the basis for Lion, A Long Way Home, continues to rise on Amazon’s sales rankings as a result of pre-Oscars attention, including People magazine’s “The True Story Behind Lion: How Lost Child Saroo Brierley Found His Birth Mother More Than 20 Years Later.”

The two book-based nominees for Best Animated Feature lost out to the original screenplay, Zootopia. It does, however, have several tie-ins.

Hollywood shows no signs of falling out of love with books, announcing new adaptations each week. As they say in show business, “There’s always next time.”

Read our chat with Ruth, below.

Join us for the next live chat with Betsy Bird about her forthcoming book, Funny Girl : Funniest. Stories. Ever. on Wednesday, March 22, 5 to 6 pm, Eastern.

Get your copy of the galley by signing up here.

A moody still from the upcoming film adaptation of Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach (PRH/Anchor; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample) features star Saoirse Ronan, called ” a turquoise vision” by Entertainment Weekly.

The two-time Oscar nominated actress stars with newcomer Billy Howle. McEwan wrote the screenplay and Dominic Cooke (The Hollow Crown) directs, his first time doing a feature film. The cinematographer is Sean Bobbitt (12 Years a Slave, Queen of Katwe, and Wonderland.)

The film does not yet have a release date and no tie-in has been announced.

It follows a long line of adaptations of McEwan’s work. He has already had eight of his novels or short stories turned into films and more are on the way.

Announced earlier this month, Benedict Cumberbatch will work with BBC One and PBS Masterpiece to adapt the award-winning 1987 novel The Child In Time (PRH/Anchor; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample). Cumberbatch is set to star and executive produce.

The most famous and successful McEwan adaptation was 2007’s Atonement, starring James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Romola Garai, Vanessa Redgrave, and Saoirse Ronan. It won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture, Drama and Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actress. 

Ewan says, in the 2011 video below, that he has found the adaptation of his books into films generally a good experience (note: at the time of the video, a different director and actress were set to do On Chesil Beach). 

Starz’s The White Princess will premiere on April 16. It’s the sequel to The White Queen, which aired on Starz in 2013, and was based on the first four books in Philippa Gregory’s The Cousins’ War series, about the long-running War of the Roses. It won both Golden Globe and Emmy nominations.

The new series adapts the fifth title and final volume in the historical fiction series. Gregory outlines the chronology of the novels on her website.

Deadline notes “The White Princess picks up three days after the conclusion of The White Queen, as a new generation ascends to the throne … The historical drama is told from the perspective of the women waging the ongoing battle for the English throne.”

The tie-in cover depicts Princess Elizabeth of York’s bloody hands gripping a white rose, the symbol of the House of York. In the book she is forced to marry into the House of Tudor.

A trade paperback tie-in will be released on March 28: The White Princess, Philippa Gregory (S&S/Touchstone; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample; also in mass market).

Self-styled “provocateur” Milo Yiannopoulos has finally gone too far. His book DANGEROUS (S&S/Threshold Editions; S&S Audio), originally announced for release on March 14, then delayed to June 13, has now been canceled by publisher Simon and Schuster because, reports the NYT, of the release of a “video in which he condones sexual relations with boys as young as 13 and laughs off the seriousness of pedophilia by Roman Catholic priests.” Further, states the story, he may lose his position as Senior Editor at Breitbart News.

That doesn’t mean the book will not be published. Yiannopoulos can now shop the book to other publishers.

Roxane Gay, who canceled her contract for future books with Simon and Schuster in protest over the Yiannopoulos book, released a statement that the move does not change her position.

Expected to be the most politically charged event in its history, the Academy Awards will be broadcast on Sunday. Two of the nominees are seen as particularly timely and the books they are based on have become best sellers.

Keying in to current events to promote their film Lion, the Weinstein Company placed an ad in Thursday’s L.A. Times, featuring one of the young stars and the words, “It took an extraordinary effort to get 8-year-old actor Sunny Pawar a visa so that he could come to America for the very first time, Next year, that might not be an option” and the exhortation to “Remember where you came from.”

The basis for that movie, A Long Way Home: A Memoir by Saroo Brierley (PRH/Berkley), retitled Lion for the tie-in, showed a sudden rise on Amazon’s sales rankings after the the ad’s appearance.

Considered a precursor to Sunday’s event, political commentary also ran through last month’s Screen Actors Guild awards ceremony. Taraji P. Henson, the star of the surprise best film winner, Hidden Figures, said in her acceptance speech, “There’s a reason why it was made now and not three years ago, not five years ago, not 10 years ago. The universe needed it now.”

The basis for that movie, Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly  (HarperCollins/Morrow), has been in the top five on USA Today‘s bestseller list since the beginning of the year.

See our full list of tie-ins to the nominees here.