Just announced — Todd Field will direct Beautiful Ruins, with Jess Walter and Field co-writing the screenplay. No word yet who might star but there are many great parts. We wrote about this great book earlier.
The cast of characters include a beautiful unknown actress we first meet in innocent youth soon to be disillusioned as we follow her derailed dreams into wise old age. The young Italian hotelier with big dreams of his own who falls in love with her, an older writer who helps rescue her, the crass studio mogul who manipulates her — and a roaring cameo by the real-life celebrity who changes the course of all their lives in 1962.
Since the overbearing publicist/producer Michael Deane is a rogue gone to seed whose vanity has compelled him to laminate his face over the decades into an alarming plastic-surgery facsimile of his former youth, the rubbery expressions of Jim Carrey might make him suitable for the role. It’s hard to see how the other characters could age from their 20s to 70s without having more than one actor portray them at different stages over the course of five decades. Anyone who’s read the book have any casting ideas for Dee, Pasquale, Claire, Alvis and Shane?
Filmmaker Todd Field, Brian Oliver and Tyler Thompson, co-founders of Cross Creek Pictures, and Patrick Milling Smith and Brian Carmody, co-founders of Smuggler Films, announced today that their companies will team up to produce the film adaptation of Jess Walter’s New York Times Best Seller, “Beautiful Ruins.” Todd Field and Jess Walter are confirmed to write the screenplay, with Field set to direct. Field will produce the film through Standard Film Company with Cross Creek’s Oliver, Thompson, Smuggler Films’ Milling Smith and Carmody, Adam Kassan will oversee production for Cross Creek.
The epic story begins in the spring of 1962 off the Ligurian Sea and centers on three young characters whose orbit around one another is set in motion by an incident involving the international jet-set center, Rome, in the throws of “La Dolce Vita” madness during the shooting of Cleopatra, and continues for decades.
In addition to appearing on the New York Times Best Sellers list, “Beautiful Ruins” was named one of the best books of 2012 by Entertainment Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, the New York Times, Amazon, Esquire and National Public Radio.
Todd Field made In the Bedroom, and then made Little Children (which is underrated, I think). So as adaptations go, he’s a good bet.