Here are some of the most notable adaptations announced in May 2021.
– Sony, Speck Gordon (Will Speck and Josh Gordon’s production company), and Hutch Parker Entertainment have acquired Bernard Waber’s 1965 children’s book Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile. William Davies will provide the script, and Speck and Gordon will direct the live-action/animation hybrid film. The book, a sequel to Waber’s The House on East 88th Street, was published by Houghton Mifflin.
– Alison Rose Greenberg will adapt her upcoming novel Bad Luck Bridesmaid for Working Title Films. St. Martin’s Griffin will publish next January.
– Walden Media and Permut Presentations have tapped Benjamin August to adapt Mercedes Graf’s nonfiction novel A Woman of Honor: Dr. Mary E. Walker and the Civil War. They also acquired the rights to Llyod J. Schwartz’s stage play Independence: The True Story of Dr. Mary Walker. Thomas Publications published Graf’s book in 2001.
– Malcolm-Jamal Warner acquired the film and TV rights to Russell Duncan’s nonfiction novel Freedom’s Shore: Tunis Campbell and the Georgia Freedmen. Warner will also star. The University of Georgia Press published the biography in 1986.
– Universal Pictures, Skybound Entertainment, Montauk Chair Productions, and First Films are moving forward with an adaptation of Robert Kirkman and Mark Silvestri’s comic book series Hardcore. Adam Wingard and Will Simmons will provide the script, based on a treatment by Kirkman. Wingard will also direct. Image Comics published the first issue (written by Andy Diggle and drawn by Alessandro Vitti) in December 2018 through their Skybound imprint.
– MGM, Ryder Picture Company, and Winklevoss Capital Management have tapped Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo to adapt Ben Mezrich’s upcoming book The Antisocial Network. Hachette will publish the book this fall.
– Over at Warner Bros. and Berlanti Schecter Productions, Jessica Sharzer will script the remake to Tony Scott’s 1983 film The Hunger, which was based on the novel by Whitley Strieber. Angela Robinson will direct. James Costigan and Michael Thomas wrote the original film, and William Morrow published Strieber’s novel in 1981.
– Paramount Pictures and Oddball Entertainment have acquired Michael Sherman’s upcoming novella The Time Runner. Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman will write the screenplay. Wes Ball will produce and direct.
– Standing Arrow Productions has tapped Angelo Pizzo to adapt Sally Jenkin’s The Real All Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, a People, and a Nation.
– Flavor Unit Entertainment (Queen Latifah) and The Jim Henson Company have acquired Nicole Glover’s novel The Conductors. John Joseph Adams/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt published the novel in March.
– Mark Gordon Pictures tapped Edward Hemming to adapt Stephen McGinty’s nonfiction novel The Dive: The Untold Story of the World’s Deepest Submarine Rescue. HarperCollins (UK) and Pegasus Books (US) published the book last week.
– Solstice Studios and The Arlook Group optioned Reeves Wiedeman’s article “The Big Hack”, and Mark Townend will write the screenplay. Wiedeman’s article originally appeared in New York Magazine in June 2016.
– Universal, Lord Miller (Phil Lord and Christopher Miller), and Pascal Pictures (Amy Pascal) acquired Michael Lewis’s May 2021 book The Premonition: A Pandemic Story. Lord and Miller will also direct. W. W. Norton & Company published.
– Kaley Cuoco’s Yes, Norman Productions acquired the rights to Katie Russell Newland’s A Season with Mom: Love, Loss, and the Ultimate Baseball Adventure. The memoir was published by Harper Collins last month.
Additional script sales can be found here on Script Pipeline.