Books Making It To The Big Screen!

This week’s “Books Making It To The Big Screen” highlights two projects that I’m very excited about.

David O. Russell (director) and Mark Wahlberg are teaming up again for the screen adaptation of Matthew Quick’s “The Silver Linings Play Book”. The reason I’m excited about this particular project, is that both Russell and Wahlberg have worked together on other past projects; films such as “Three Kings”, “I Love Huckabess” (LOVED), and the brilliant, “The Fighter”.

Book Summary: THE SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK is the story of how one man regains his memory and comes to terms with the magnitude of his wife’s betrayal.

During the years he spends in a neural health facility, Pat Peoples formulates a theory about silver linings: he believes his life is a movie produced by God, his mission is to become physically fit and emotionally supportive, and his happy ending will be the return of his estranged wife Nikki. When Pat goes to live with his parents everything seems changed; no one will talk to him about Nikki; his old friends are saddled with families; the Philadelphia Eagles keep losing, making his father moody; and his new therapist seems to be recommending adultery as a form of therapy.

When Pat meets the tragically widowed, physically fit, and clinically depressed Tiffany, she offers to act as a liaison between him and his wife, if only he will give up watching football, agree to perform in this year’s Dance Away Depression competition, and promise not to tell anyone about their ‘contract.’ All the while, Pat keeps searching for his silver lining.

The Silver Linings Play Book is tentatively scheduled for a 2013 release and no confirmation yet on what role Mark Wahlberg will take on in relation to the project. 

Catherine Hardwicke is set to direct the movie adaptation of Martha O’Connor’s “The Bitch Posse” and some critics are eager to see Hardwicke’s take on the book about teens (who eerily did a very good job with the film, Thirteen). 

The story focuses on three high school friends, with a terrible incident changing the dynamics of the group. Having not read the book, all I can think of is “I Know What You Did You Last Summer”, but I’m sure that’s not what it’s about. Actually, I think I may put this book on my to-read list. See how that works?

Here’s the book summary: The story focuses on three friends, Cherry, Amy and Rennie, as high school seniors and as women in their mid-30s. Compelled by miserable home lives to form the Bitch Posse as teenagers, the three girls ricochet dangerously through their last year of high school, sharing a passionate, almost sinister bond until a terrible secret rips them apart. Still damaged—and separated—by the unspeakable event, the three live equally wretched lives as adults, Cherry in a mental institution, Rennie as a promiscuous failed writer and Amy in a loveless marriage. After pages of vodka, cocaine, “f@#king” and “cutting” (in both past and present narratives), the friends’ terrible secret finally comes to light, though it reveals logistical and thematic gaps in the narrative. “Her past is like a sore that won’t ever heal, memories are spurting at her like blood and she can’t close the wound” characterizes the level of emotional complexity attained in this heavy-handed novel, but the story fascinates even as it repels.

No word yet on a projected release date.