Warner Bros. Nabs Rights to YA Novel 'The Young World' (Exclusive)

After a heated auction Friday, Warner Bros. won a bidding war to secure the rights to The Young World,  the first in an original trilogy of post-apocalyptic YA novels by filmmaker turned novelist Chris Weitz.

Weitz will adapt the books and also will direct and produce from his original novel, which will be published in 2013 by Little Brown. Depth of Field will produce, along with Andrew Miano.

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The books center on teenage survivors who inherit a destroyed and desolate earth, after a cataclysmic event kills off every person on earth not between the ages of 12 and 21.  Ill-equipped to restore society to working order, the surviving residents of New York City must try to rebuild their world from the ground up.

Weitz directed the film adaptation of the novel The Golden Compass, a major international hit, and the film adaptation of New Moon from the series of Twilight books (the film grossed more than $700 million worldwide).  Weitz most recently directed 2011's A Better Life, for which Demian Bichir was nominated for a best actor Oscar.

Chantal Nong brought the project into the studio and will oversee with Lynn Harris.

Weitz is reposed by WME and attorney Alex Kohner of Morris Yorn Barnes & Levine.

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'Devil Wears Prada' Writer to Adapt Modern 'Jane Eyre' Graphic Novel

Aline Brosh McKenna and Simon Kinberg

In a deal worth low seven figures, Fox 2000 has picked up the rights to Rochester, an upcoming graphic novel from Archaia Publishing, with Aline Brosh McKenna attached to write the adaptation.

McKenna also will produce with Simon Kinberg, the Fox-based producer who is working on X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Rochester is a modern retelling of Jane Eyre, the classic 1847 novel by Charlotte Bronte. The book told the story of Eyre, an orphaned girl who becomes an independently minded governess at the estate of Edward Rochester, a man with a secret or two who falls for her.

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Archaia’s editor-in-chief Stephen Christy will exec produce with the company’s Jack Cummins. The deal may be the company’s last act as an independent publisher; BOOM! Studio is acquiring the company, known for its many Eisner-nominated graphic novels.

Rochester marks a reunion for McKenna, Kinberg and Christy as the trio previously teamed up to adapt Archaia’s acclaimed sci-fi graphic novel series Rust. That project is set up at 20th Century Fox.

Rochester also returns McKenna into the fold of Fox 2000 for the first time since her breakthrough film, the adaptation of The Devil Wears Prada. McKenna wrote the screenplay for Cinderella, Disney's live-action take on the fairy tale starring Cate Blanchett and Lily James. Kinberg is producing Cinderella, which is in pre-production.

 

Mystery lurks in "Under the Dome&"; series based on Stephen King novel

Although we’re accustomed to broadcast networks using the summer as a dumping ground for programs they have lost faith in, that’s not always the case. “Under the Dome” (9 p.m. Mountain time Monday on KUTV channel 2) was commissioned specifically for a summer airing. Based on a Stephen King novel, this is a limited-run series (13 episodes) that, in success, could possibly return next summer. (Producers have sketched out a story beyond the first season.)
It’s also not the first time CBS has tried a story based on Kings’ work in the summer. In 1991 the network aired a seven-episode series, “Golden Years.”
‘‘Under the Dome” is vintage Stephen King: A large cast of characters grappling with a seemingly supernatural event when a dome descends on their town, Chester’s Mill, Maine.
Monday’s premiere offers an effective setup to the series, introducing more than a dozen characters and slowly peeling away how they are all related.
The pilot, written by Brian K. Vaughn (“Lost”) and directed by Niels Arden Oplev (the original, 2009 “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”), is filled with an array of creative dome encounters ­— a cow gets cut in half by the dome, an airplane smashes into the dome, etc. — but in the early going viewers learn little about the dome itself. Where did it come from? Can you dig under it? Presumably these are the questions “Under the Dome” will spend the next 13 weeks addressing.
The dome descends just after Dale “Barbie” Barbara (Mike Vogel, “Pan Am,” ‘‘Bates Motel”) finishes burying a body in the woods. He gets spooked driving down a road when he passes a sheriff (Jeff Fahey, “Lost”) and deputy (Natalie Martinez) driving in the opposite direction. Barbie accidently drives off the road onto a farm where he witnesses the dome descend before saving a kid (Colin Ford) from falling airplane parts.
Meanwhile, that kid’s sister, Angie (Britt Robertson), is having sex with her insecure boyfriend, Junior (Alexander Koch), who turns into a domestic-violence perpetrator, which happens kind of a lot in King’s stories.
Junior is the son of city councilman James “Big Jim” Rennie (Dean Norris, “Breaking Bad”), who seems to know something about extra propane shipments the town received just before the arrival of the dome, shipments that caught the eye of a nosey neighbor, prompting her to call local newspaper editor Julia (Rachelle Lefevre, “Twilight”) even as the neighbor admits, “I get my news online, sweetheart, like everybody else.”
That seems like a lot of characters already, but it’s really just the start. There are also characters at the local community radio station and a couple passing through town while taking their daughter to camp.
The premiere hints at some sort of conspiracy by the town fathers, but also an affliction that causes seizures in young people left under the dome. And at least one major character may be taken out by the dome pretty early on.
With Stephen King stories, it’s all about character development and plot execution. So far, the “Under the Dome” characters are just sketches and the plot is just getting started. It remains to be seen if either will merit watching for a full season, but the pilot does exactly what it should: It intrigues and makes the case for viewers to come back next week for more.

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