Irish authors have also been having a couple of good months in Hollywood.
Oscar-winning producer Scott Rudin recently snatched up the movie rights for The Ninth Hour, Alice McDermott’s excellent recent novel. The Ninth Hour depicts the moments of grace and labor that fill up the lives of various mid-century Brooklyn nuns. The book’s action is set in motion by a tragedy involving an Irish immigrant and his Irish American wife. As always, McDermott presents a complicated, masterful depiction of Irish Catholic life.
Then there is Dennis Lehane’s new book Since We Fell, which is also being developed as a movie. Like many recent best-sellers – Gone Girl, Girl on a Train – Lehane takes a close look at a women on the verge of a breakdown. Lehane’s protagonist is an internationally renowned journalist, who reaches a moment of crisis and has to figure out what her life – which on the outside seems perfect – really adds up to.
Lehane, of course, is no stranger to Hollywood. His Boston Irish books Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River, and Shutter Island have all been turned into big-time movie productions.
Finally, journalist and crime chronicler T.J. English, whose books on Irish organized crime have set the standard on the topic, has a new book out that has already been sold to Hollywood. English’s new book The Corporation has been acquired by Paramount. Currently, The Revenant star Leonardo DiCaprio is attached to produce, while Benicio del Toro is slated to play José Miguel Battle, Sr., the “godfather” of the Cuban organized crime syndicate at the center of English’s book. ♦
More Irish Eye on Hollywood:
The Mara Sisters to Tackle Jesus and the Kennedys
The Golden Age of Irish Prestige TV
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