According to Deadline.com, 20th Century Fox has hired Karen McCullah & Kirsten Smith to adapt 29, the novel by Adena Halpern. John Davis is producing. The book is a high concept comedy about an elderly woman who wakes up in the body of her 29-year old self and finally has the chance to do things right. McCullah & Smith’s credits include Legally Blonde and The House Bunny. In addition to solo projects, they are scripting Love It Or Leave It for Chockstone Pictures, which they are producing with Seth Jaret and Steve Schwartz, Paula Mae Schwartz and Roger Schwartz. The scribes are repped by Paradigm and manager Seth Jaret.

Summary:

What if you closed your eyes, blew out the candles, and your wish came true?

Ellie Jerome is a young-at-heart seventy-five-year-old who feels she has more in common with her twenty-nine-year-old granddaughter, Lucy, than her fifty-five-year-old daughter, Barbara. Ellie’s done everything she can to stay young, and the last thing she wants is to celebrate another birthday. So when she finds herself confronted with a cake full of candles, Ellie wishes more than anything that she could be twenty-nine again, just for one day. But who expects a wish like that to come true?

29 is the story of three generations of women and how one magical day shakes up everything they know about each other. While Ellie finds that the life of a twenty-something is not as carefree as she expected, the sheer joy of being young again prompts her to consider living her life all over. Does she dare stay young for more than this day, even if it means leaving everyone she loves behind?

Fresh, funny, and delightful, 29 is an enchanting adventure about families, love, and the real lessons of youth.

The Lucky One is the latest Nicholas Sparks novel to be turned into a film. It stars Zac Efron and  is scheduled for release April 20, 2012. I’m sure Nicholas Sparks fans will be rushing to the theaters to check this one out.

Oscar-winner Diablo Cody talked about her recent plans to turn the beloved young adult series, Sweet Valley High, into a film. While being interviewed for Indiewire about her upcoming release, Young Adult, Cody discussed the big screen adaptation of the beloved series.

I want it to be wonderfully nostalgic. I want it to be to the 80′s what American Graffiti was to the early 60′s. I want it to be looking back on a really cool time and enjoying yourself and I want it to be glamorous and colorful and bubblegum and  feast for the senses. That’s my plan.

The first book in the series was released in 1983 and spanned over 150 books, including an adulthood follow-up book this year. It produced a television show, which ran from 1994-1997.

It looks like Hollywood darling, Drew Barrymore, will be producing (and possibly directing) the film version of Ally Carter’s bestselling young adult novel, HEIST SOCIETY.

Here is a description of HEIST SOCIETY:

When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her on a trip to the Louvre…to case it. For her seventh birthday, Katarina and her Uncle Eddie traveled to Austria…to steal the crown jewels. When Kat turned fifteen, she planned a con of her own—scamming her way into the best boarding school in the country, determined to leave the family business behind. Unfortunately, leaving “the life” for a normal life proves harder than she’d expected.

Soon, Kat’s friend and former co-conspirator, Hale, appears out of nowhere to bring Kat back into the world she tried so hard to escape. But he has a good reason: a powerful mobster has been robbed of his priceless art collection and wants to retrieve it. Only a master thief could have pulled this job, and Kat’s father isn’t just on the suspect list, he is the list. Caught between Interpol and a far more deadly enemy, Kat’s dad needs her help.

For Kat, there is only one solution: track down the paintings and steal them back. So what if it’s a spectacularly impossible job? She’s got two weeks, a teenage crew, and hopefully just enough talent to pull off the biggest heist in her family’s history–and, with any luck, steal her life back along the way.

Tonight is the launch of the Encore miniseries MOBY DICK starring William Hurt, Ethan Hawke and Gillian Anderson.

Nantucket. 1850.

The tiny island is the capital of the American whaling industry, where sailors, traders and harpooners seek their fortunes. Three of them – Ishmael (Charlie Cox), Pip (Daniel Gordon), and Queequeg (Raoul Trujillo) – become crewmembers of the Pequod, and their journey with the charismatic but tyrannical Captain Ahab (William Hurt) begins.

A veteran whale hunter who lost his leg to the gigantic Moby Dick, Ahab is obsessed with revenge. But his long-suffering wife (Gillian Anderson) and crew know little about his plans. Only his first mate, Starbuck (Ethan Hawke), senses the dangers ahead.

Ishmael in particular is hypnotized by Ahab, ignoring the warnings of Queequeg and Starbuck. But when the crew is crippled by hunger and thirst across the Atlantic, they all see the effects of his bitterness. Ahab wants Moby Dick. And when he kills one of the white whale’s companions, the apocalyptic struggle between man and animal begins.

A classic of American literature, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is dramatically reimagined on screen in an epic tale of adventure, vengeance and obsession.

Starring: William Hurt, Ethan Hawke, Gillian Anderson, Donald Sutherland, Billy Boyd, Charlie Cox, Eddie Marsan

I literally can’t wait to see this one! I love Emily Giffin’s books!

Deadline.com reports that Tom Hanks has been chosen to star in Cloud Atlas, an adaptation of the David Mitchell novel that consist of six interconnected stories.

Here’s the Hollywood pitch:

An epic story of humankind in which the actions and consequences of our lives impact one another throughout the past, present and future as one soul is shaped from a murderer into a savior and a single act of kindness ripples out for centuries to inspire a revolution.

From Amazon.com:

From David Mitchell, the Booker Prize nominee, award-winning writer and one of the featured authors in Granta’s “Best of Young British Novelists 2003” issue, comes his highly anticipated third novel, a work of mind-bending imagination and scope.

A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified “dinery server” on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation — the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other’s echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small.

In his captivating third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity’ s dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us.