Thursday, May 9, 2013

Lionsgate Taps Jack Thorne To Adapt Bestselling YA Novel Wonder

Even though the horizon of cinema’s future is dotted with highly fantastical young adult novel adaptations like The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and The Maze Runner, there is more than enough room in film for children who don’t spend their novelized lives within dystopian worlds sharing space with mythological creatures. If Judy Blume can finally get the Tiger Eyes adaptation she’d been waiting for, then let’s open the floodgates for more humanized YA fare.

Deadline reports Lionsgate is doing just that by hiring English screenwriter Jack Thorne to adapt the critically adored Wonder, the heart-unraveling debut from author Raquel Jaramillo, under the pseudonym R.J. Palacio. Though the only produced script Thorne has written was 2009’s The Scouting Book for Boys, he’s been all over British television, writing several episodes of the teen drama Skins and the apocalyptic horror The Fades. He also created the mockumentary reality series Cast Offs.