Hayley breaks down the movies and TV series based on books due to hit screens in the coming months.
Salem's Lot
It’s actually been a hot minute since we’ve had a Stephen King adaptation, but there’s always several in the pipeline. That’s especially true for this new film version of Salem’s Lot, which was shot three years ago back in 2021, and has been sitting in a kind of release limbo ever since. The film is now skipping theatres, heading straight to streaming on Max (f.k.a. HBO Max) instead, and is the first movie adaptation for the novel, which previously had two different miniseries takes. The story follows Ben Mears, a struggling writer who returns to his hometown of Jerusalem’s Lot hoping for inspiration to strike, only to discover that the town now has a bit of a vampire problem. Director Gary Dauberman is no stranger to King’s work, having written the screenplay for both IT and its sequel in 2017 and ‘19.
Disclaimer
Revered filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón is, like many of his peers, turning his talents to the small screen, and bringing a little prestige to the world of pulpy TV thrillers. His first work since bagging multiple Oscars for Roma in 2018, Disclaimer, based on Renée Knight’s 2015 psychological thriller, is a seven-part miniseries that will stream for Apple TV+. Cate Blanchett stars as Catherine Ravenscroft, a highly respected documentary journalist who is sent a novel that appears to be written about her, exposing a horrific secret she thought had been long buried. Having already screened at the Venice and Toronto film festivals in the past month, reviews claim that Cuarón implored critics not to spoil the twists of the story, and that writing about it without doing so is quite the challenge; sounds like a juicy watch to me.
Lee
Kate Winslet is said to turn in another fantastic and formidable performance in Lee, a biopic about fashion-model-turned-war-photographer Lee Miller. The film, which is based on The Lives of Lee Miller by Miller’s son Antony Penrose, was certainly a passion project for Winslet: as well as starring in the lead role, she also serves as producer, and it took over 8 years of development to finally bring her idea to the screen. Spanning a decade in the life of Miller, it follows her pivot from being in front of the camera to behind it, as she is enlisted by Vogue Magazine to document the frontline of the second World War. It marks the directorial debut for cinematographer Ellen Kuras, and also stars Andy Samberg, Alexander Skarsgård, Marion Cotillard and Andrea Riseborough.
Here
Forrest Gump fans rejoice, because Tom Hanks, Robin Wright and Robert Zemeckis are getting the band back together. Here is an unusual film adaptation with an unusual inspiration: Richard McGuire’s graphic novel of the same name is a mostly-wordless series of illustrations that imagine one spot on Earth at different points in time, from the prehistoric era to well into the unknown future. In the adaptation, Hanks and Wright star as a couple whose lives pass by through decades in the living room of their house–that one spot on Earth, from one fixed point of view. Does that mean it features de-aging technology, you might ask? And I regret to inform you that yes, it unfortunately does. Hopefully that's just a small blemish on an otherwise intriguing concept.
Wicked
If it feels like the film adaptation of Gregory Maguire’s book-turned-stage-musical Wicked has been happening for about a decade, that’s because it literally has. The unofficial prequel to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz became a Broadway sensation in 2003, and in 2009, Maguire sold the book rights to ABC for a TV series completely unrelated to the Broadway show. After several changes of hand, the adaptation eventually ended up as a film version of the musical in 2021, with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande being cast in the lead roles of Elphaba and Galinda. Helmed by In the Heights director John M. Chu, the movie will actually be two movies (thought we’d moved past that trend of breaking one story into multiple films? Think again!) and feature two new songs—gotta get that best original song Oscar somehow.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
It’s a wonder in itself that Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude has finally been adapted for the screen. The author has been notoriously protective of his masterpiece (which pretty much invented magical realism) throughout his life, not wanting it to suffer the same fate as Love in the Time of Cholera. Along comes Netflix, determined to fulfill García Márquez’s wishes for an authentic, long-form, Spanish-language, almost entirely Colombian-made adaptation. The series will comprise two seasons of eight episodes each, telling the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, who establish the fictional, fantastical city of Macondo. Can a Netflix adaptation possibly live up to the legacy of the book, though? That, we’ll have to wait and see.
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