Here are some of the most notable adaptations announced in February 2022.
– Steven Spielberg will produce and direct a new Bullitt movie! The 1968 film was based on Robert L. Fish’s 1963 novel Mute Witness, with a screenplay by Alan R. Trustman and Harry Kleiner. Josh Singer will script the adaptation. Doubleday published the original book.
– BRON Studios and STORY Collective have tapped Keenan Scott II to adapt JJ Bola’s recent novel The Selfless Act of Breathing. Atria Books published last month.
– Twentieth Century Studios has acquired the rights to Marion Meade’s Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase. James Mangold will produce and direct. HarperCollins first published the book in October 1995.
– Writer/director Aziz Ansari will turn Atul Gawande’s nonfiction Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End for Searchlight Pictures. Ansari will star alongside Bill Murray. Gawande’s book was published in October 2014 by Metropolitan Books.
– Sharon Stone has optioned Woman On Fire, an upcoming novel by Lisa Barr. Stone will produce and star. HarperCollins will release the book this month.
– Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson’s G Unit Films, Color Farm, and Illuminous have optioned the comic book series Xerø from creator Christopher Priest and artist ChrisCross. DC Comics published the first issue in May 1997, and the series ran through April 1998.
– Madison Wells Media and HiddenLight Productions will adapt State of Terror, a novel written by Louise Penny and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Both Penny and Clinton will serve as consultants and executive producers. Simon & Schuster published the thriller last October.
– ImageMovers (Robert Zemekis) and The Playtone Company (Tom Hanks) are making a movie based on Richard McGuire’s graphic novel Here. Zemekis will direct and co-write the screenplay with Eric Roth, and Hanks will star. Pantheon Books published the graphic novel in December 2014.
– Morning Moon Productions has optioned Mallory Weggemann’s memoir Limitless: The Power of Hope and Resilience to Overcome Circumstance. Thomas Nelson published last March.
– Christy Hall will adapt Liane Moriarty’s The Husband’s Secret for CBS Films and Depth of Field Productions. Kat Coiro will direct. Berkley published the novel in June 2017.
– South Park and Lady Dynamite writer Pam Brady will script an animated Smurfs musical(!!) for Paramount Animation, Nickelodeon Animation Studios, and LAFIG Belgium. The original comic strip was created by Belgian writer/artist Peyo before becoming the famous cartoon series. (Before that, the Smurfs first appeared in his strip Johan and Peewit.)
– Sugar23 and Lance Bass Productions have optioned Jean Meltzer’s novel The Matzah Ball. MIRA published last September.
– Archer Gray Productions and FilmNation Entertainment will adapt Deborah Layton’s memoir Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor’s Story of Life and Death in the Peoples Temple, now with the title White Night. William Wheeler provided the script. Anne Sewitsky will direct. Chloë Grace Moretz and Joseph Gordon-Levitt will star. Doubleday first published the book in 1998.
– Universal Pictures, SpringHill Entertainment (LeBron James), and A Penny for Your Thoughts Entertainment (Prentice Penny) are making an adaptation of Jerry Craft’s New Kid. Eli Wilson Pelton will write the script, and Penny will direct. The graphic novel was published by Quill Tree Books in February 2019.
Additional script sales can be found here on Script Pipeline.