Here are some of the most notable adaptations announced in March 2020:
– Simon Stephenson will adapt his sci-fi novel Set My Heart to Five for Focus Features, Working Title Films, and Complete Fiction Pictures. Edgar Wright is attached to direct. The novel will be published by 4th Estate in the UK in summer 2020 and by Hanover Square Press in the US in September 2020.
– MGM and Arcana acquired Andy Weir’s sci-fi novel The Hail Mary. Ryan Gosling will produce and star. Random House will publish the novel in spring 2021.
– Bow and Arrow Entertainment and Our Lady Productions picked up T. Kira Madden’s memoir Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls. Frankie Shaw is attached to produce and direct. Bloomsbury published the book in 2019.
– Peer Kaee and Per Kuskner’s Danish novel The Midas Syndrome was acquired by Ugly Duckling Films. The novel is inspired by the real-life money laundering scandal involving Danske Bank and was published by HarperCollins Denmark in March 2020.
– Journalist Kevin Fagan’s podcast The Doodler was acquired for adaptation by Ugly Duckling Films. The series follows the Doodler, the real-life serial killer of gay men in San Francisco who was never caught.
– Over at Blumhouse, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is getting another adaptation. Jason Blum will produce, Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay will script, and Karyn Kusama will direct. Dracula was originally published in 1897 by Archibald Constable and Company.
– Lucy Alibar will adapt Delia Owen’s coming-of-age crime/thriller novel Where the Crawdads Sing for 3000 Pictures and Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. The novel was published in August 2018 by Penguin Random House.
– Universal Pictures, Pascal Pictures, and Chris Morgan Productions have tapped Liz Hannah to adapt and direct Under Another Name by Alexandra Andrews. The psychological thriller will be published by Little, Brown in March 2021.
– Ian Jeffers will adapt Rambo creator David Morrell’s 1975 thriller novel Testament for Reel World Management. Morrell’s novel was originally published by Warner Books.
– Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions will produce an adaptation of Bethany Clift’s I Alone Survive. The thriller novel will be published in spring 2021 by Hodder & Stoughton.
– Michael Frayn will adapt his novel Spies for Middlemarch Films and Left Bank Pictures. Rebecca Frayn will direct. The novel was originally published in April 2002 by Metropolitan Books.
– Playground Entertainment optioned the supernatural thriller novel The Stranger Times by C.K. McDonnell. Transworld will publish in early 2021.
– Matt Deller will adapt Mountain Man, the first in a series of novels by Keith C. Blackmore, for The Traveling Picture Show Company, Balcony 9 Productions, and Productivity Media. Blackmore self-published the book in 2011.
– Henry Alberto will adapt Ami Polonsky’s debut novel Gracefully Grayson for Paperclip Ltd. Yeardley Smith will produce. The trans coming-of-age novel was originally published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers in 2014.
Additional script sales can be found here on Script Pipeline.