Here are some of the most notable adaptations announced in January 2021:
– Eric Idle is adapting Spamalot for Paramount! Idle wrote the original book and lyrics for Broadway musical, with music by Idle and John DuPrez. Casey Nicholaw, who choreographed the original show, will direct.
– Green Door Pictures (Idris Elba’s production company) has acquired the rights to Salena Godden’s darkly comedic novel Mrs. Death Misses Death, which was published last month by Canongate.
– Darren Aronofsky and Luke Dawson will adapt Koji Suzuki’s short story Adrift for Blumhouse Productions, Paradox (Jared Leto), and Aronofsky’s Protozoa Pictures. Leto will also star, and Aronofsky will also direct. The original story was published in Suzuki’s collection Dark Water, published in Japan in 1996 and by Vertical in the United States in 2006.
– In other Aronofsky news: Samuel D. Hunter will adapt his 2012 play The Whale for A24 and Protozoa Pictures. Aronofsky will direct, and Brendan Fraser will star.
– Gillian Robespierre and Melissa Border will script the adaptation of Broder’s The Pisces for Archer Gray Productions. Robespierre will direct, and Claire Foy is set to star. The novel was published in 2018 by Hogarth Press.
– Over at Paramount Animation, Tom Wheeler will script the adaptation to his upcoming children’s book series C.O.S.M.O.S.. The first in the series, The Doomsday Vault, will be published in March 2022.
– Savvy Media Holdings optioned Alex Davies’ nonfiction novel Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car, published last month by Simon & Schuster.
– Savvy Media also acquired an untitled script written by Justin Lader and based on the books Predator King: Peter Nygard’s Dark Life of Rape, Drugs, and Blackmail by Melissa Cronin and Bacon Vs. Nygard: Sex-Trafficking, Political Corruption, Murder-for-Hire, and the Takedown by Dick Russell. Cronin’s book was published in April 2020 by Skyhorse Publishing, and Russell’s will be published in the future.
– SK Global and 6th & Idaho have tapped Elliott San to write the adaptation for The Walled City, a YA novel written by Ryan Graudin and published by Little, Brown in November 2014.
– Paramount Players and Jerry Bruckheimer Films have acquired the rights to S.A. Cosby’s novel Razorblade Tears, which Flatiron Books will publish in July 2021.
– Black Bear Pictures and Plan B Entertainment (Brad Pitt) have optioned Richard Powers’ novel Bewilderment, which W.W. Norton & Company will publish in fall 2021.
– Exile Content has acquired Azam Ahmed and Paulina Villegas’s New York Times article “He Was One of Mexico’s Deadliest Assassins. Then He Turned on His Cartel.” The article was published in December 2019.
– Ben Affleck and Kate Gritmon will write Keeper of the Lost Cities for Walt Disney Pictures. Affleck will also produce (through his company, Pearl Street Films) and direct. The movie will be based on the series of novels by Shannon Messenger. The first in the series was published by Aladdin in August 2013.
Additional script sales can be found here on Script Pipeline.