The year advances apace, and yet there still doesn’t seem to be a release date for the supposed-to-come-out-in-2017 film adaptation of Sanditon, the novel Jane Austen died without finishing.
But another Austen-related film project is apparently now in the works: an adaptation of a 2016 young-adult novel called The Season, which updates Pride and Prejudice to the world of Texas debutantes.
The book, by Jonah Lisa Dyer and Stephen Dyer, passed me by when it came out last summer, but a movie? Bring it on! As regular blog readers know, I’ll see virtually anything semi-Austenian, on the big or small screen. Heck, I watched Unleashing Mr. Darcy.
Still, it’s worth remembering that the journey from studio-acquires-story to movie-appears-in-multiplex can be long and fraught. Remember Jane By the Sea, the romantic comedy/biopic that was flavor of the month two years ago? Yeah. Me neither.
2 comments
May 12 2017 11:06PM by Cinthia
I do not think the Sanditon adaptation will be released this year, as it seems it has not even been filmed yet. From I what been able to notice, from page to screen projects may take years to come a reality, even with a script in hand and cast announced. Just among Austen adaptations, I remember that it took years from the moment we first heard news about the project that would become From Prada to Nada, with changes in cast and film crew. The same was about the Whit Stillman project that later became a Lady Susan adaptation. Those were very well recorded at Austenblog. I suppose the same will happen with Sanditon. So, I hope we only need to be patient :-). There are of course books whose film rights are sold, such as the Jane by the Sea adaptation, as well as the Longbourn adaptation (do you remember that one?), but who knows when they may be filmed, perhaps never. A non-Austen recent example is the adaptation of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, now titled just Guernsey. It has been years since the film project was announced. Initially Kate Winslet was to star and Sir Kenneth Branagh as director. Now years later, cameras had finally started rolling but Mike Newell is directing and Lily James starring.
May 15 2017 02:11PM by Deborah Yaffe
All very true, but I'd been under the impression that filming had begun on the Sanditon adaptation (although, as I'm trying to Google it, I'm coming up dry, so perhaps I imagined that!) Glad to hear that the Guernsey Literary etc. is being filmed -- I loved that book! Though I'd take Kate Winsley over Lily James any day of the week. . .