Best-selling writer Cussler, who has featured Pitt in 19 of his 32 books, is suing Crusader Entertainment, owned by Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz, for making so many script and plot changes to the film version of his book “Sahara” that it was doomed to box-office failure.

“This was not the dramatic, gripping story Clive Cussler told. As a result, the audience just didn’t care,” Fields said in his opening statement. He added that the movie “Sahara” released in 2005 with Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz lost between $60 million and $70 million.

In a countersuit, Crusader said Cussler had overstated by tens of millions the number of books he had sold to induce them to enter the agreement.

Cussler is seeking millions of dollars in damages.

Link to the Yahoo News article

From Variety:

HBO has acquired the rights to turn George R.R. Martin’s bestselling fantasy series “A Song of Fire & Ice” into a dramatic series to be written and exec produced by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

“Fire” is the first TV project for Benioff (”Troy”) and Weiss (”Halo”) and will shoot in Europe or New Zealand. Benioff and Weiss will write every episode of each season together save one, which the author (a former TV writer) will script.

View the full story here.

The author-screenwriter teams behind “Children of Men,” “The Devil Wears Prada,” “The Illusionist,” “The Last King of Scotland” and “Notes on a Scandal” have been selected as finalists for the University of Southern California’s Scripter Award.

The Scripter, awarded annually by the USC Libraries, is the only honor that recognizes both the authors and screenwriters of a produced book-to-film adaptation. The winner will be announced Friday and will be feted at a February 18 ceremony.

Read the list of finalists at the full Yahoo! News article.

Yahoo! has an interesting article about the role of authors when Hollywood decides to put their books on the big screen:

So it was, and so it almost always is: Authors write books. Screenwriters write screenplays. And while there are strong exceptions to every rule (Herman Wouk, Larry McMurtry), a savvy author tends to know when to step aside and let the filmmakers take charge — or, in some cases, the sausage makers. For some reason, authors tend to refer to pork products when discussing Hollywood.

Zoe Heller, author of “What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal: A Novel” (now “Notes on a Scandal”), shared a few notes with screenwriter Patrick Marber but kept away from much of the production. “I didn’t want to be a fifth wheel lurking around the set,” she says. “It’s a bit like that old line about seeing sausages made: The sausage may be highly delicious when it comes out, but I didn’t necessarily want to be involved in the sausage-making process.”

Whether in the sausage factory or not, authors say they try to detach their mental ownership of the stories from the film versions. Assured that their novel is out on the shelves, they do some self-convincing that what goes up on the screen is from another universe.

Ultimately, watching a professionally made, well-acted version of their story takes some of the sting away.

Link to the Yahoo! News article

The movie Eragon (which is based on the widely-read fantasy novel with the same title) is in theaters today. I’ve taken the time to compile a listing of reviews, along with a short excerpt and a link to the full article. So far, the critics don’t seem too impressed.

Some of the major ones:

The New York Times (View Full Review):

“Eragon” is what happens when misguided studio executives option a novel written by a teenager (Christopher Paolini) with a head full of Anne McCaffrey and Ursula K. Le Guin. Not full enough, however; this boy-and-his-dragon fantasy set in a land bristling with Tolkienesque nomenclature and earnest British actors is as lacking in fresh ideas as Tim Allen’s manager.

CNN / Associated Press (View Full Review):

This sword-and-sorcery tale loots its plot points and character archetypes from millennia of standard-issue mythology, old and new. It does offer some striking visual effects and a climactic battle of computer-generated combatants that’s rousing enough, even if it looks like outtakes from the epic clash of “The Return of the King.”

BBC (View Full Review):

Jeremy Irons reminiscing on days of yore when “men rode astride magnificent beasts” will probably make grown-up viewers titter but young children shouldn’t mind the cheesy bluster of Eragon.

Twelve others:

(more…)

Judith Viorst’s 2 million plus selling children’s book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, has been acquired by Columbia Pictures. Mike Bender is penning the adaptation and Neil Moritz is set to produce. Moritz credits his son for the project’s inception.

“This is one of my son’s favorite books, and I would read it to him every day,” Moritz said. “And a few months ago, out of the blue, he asked, ‘When are they making this into a movie, Daddy?’ And I said, Why didn’t I think of that?”

Read the Book Standard/Hollywood Reporter Article

A movie about the fast food industry - with a bite. Yahoo News discusses some of the problems and processes involved in bringing it to the big screen.

Journalist Eric Schlosser, author of “Fast Food Nation,” said he struggled to find a publisher for his 2001 nonfiction book that became a surprise bestseller. Five years later, Schlosser said he ran into similar problems trying turning the book — an indictment of the U.S. fast food industry subtitled “The Dark Side of the All-American Meal” — into a film of the same name. It opened in U.S. cinemas on Friday.

“I spent more than a year trying to get a documentary made,” said Schlosser, who met with several networks but said he became troubled by their connections to fast food advertisers. “In the end I just felt uncomfortable,” he told Reuters. “I would rather a film never be made than a film be made that was a sellout, a film that took out the sharp edges and smoothed them over a little bit.”

Link to the full Yahoo News article

It was an offer author Mark Winegardner could not refuse when he was asked to finish off the saga of America’s most powerful fictional crime family, the Corleone clan, and let them rest in peace.

…Winegardner has just released the final novel in the series, “The Godfather’s Revenge,” which moves the family onto its biggest stage of all — the intersection of organised crime and national politics.

Full article, Belinda Goldsmith, Reuters