Picturestart to Develop Film Adaptation of Elizabeth Acevedo’s Novel “With the Fire on High”

Posted on August 8, 2019 by Tom Castaneda

Elizabeth Acevedo’s Fire is headed to the big screen…

Picturestart has acquired the rights to the Dominican-American poet and author’s New York Times bestselling novel With the Fire on High and will develop and produce a film that Acevedo is set to adapt.

Published in May by HarperCollins, the book tells the story of Emoni Santiago, a 17-year-old girl who must navigate the challenges of modern life in Philadelphia after becoming a single mother during her freshman year of high school. The one place she can let all that go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness and pure joy for everyone in her life including her baby girl and her abuela. Even though she dreams of working as a chef after she graduates, Emoni knows it’s not worth her time to pursue the impossible. Yet, despite the rules she thinks she has to play by, once Emoni starts cooking, her only choice is to let her talent break free.

This year, Acevedo, a slam poet, became the first woman of color to win the Carnegie Medalchildren’s book award for her novel Poet X, which also won the 2018 National Book Award for Young People’s Literatureamong other prizes.

Focus Features to Release the Bayona-Directed “A Monster Calls” In October 2016

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Tom Castaneda

Juan Antonio Bayona’s Monster project will call on American audiences in October 2016…

Focus Features has announced plans to release A Monster Calls, the film directed by the 37-year-old Spanish filmmaker, on October 14, 2016.

Based on the award-winning children’s fantasy novel by Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls centers on a young boy who attempts to deal with his mother’s illness and school bullies by escaping into a fantastical world of monsters and fairy tales.

Ness wrote the novel based on an original idea by the late Siobhan Dowd, and he and illustrator Jim Kay won Britain’s prestigious Carnegie Medal and Greenaway Medal in 2012, presented to the year’s best children’s literature in the United Kingdom.

Ness is adapting the screenplay from his novel.

Bayona’s last project, The Impossible, earned him a Goya Award for Best Director in February 2013.

Bayona to Direct the Film Adaptation of “A Monster Calls”

Posted on March 10, 2014 by Tom Castaneda

Juan Antonio Bayona has landed a monster project…

The 37-year-old Spanish filmmaker, whose most recent film The Impossible earned him five Goya Awards, including Best Director, will next direct the film A Monster Calls.

It’s a film adaptation of the children’s fantasy novel of the same name by Patrick Ness from an original idea by Siobhan Dowd.

Set in present-day England, it centers on a boy who struggles to cope with the consequences of his mother’s terminal cancer; he is serially visited in the middle of the night by a monster who tells stories. Dowd suffered from terminal cancer herself when she started the story and died before she could write it.

The film adaptation is already on course to begin production this fall for a 2016 release.

Ness adapted the script his Carnegie Medal– and Greenaway Medal-winning work.

The film is being financed by River Road Entertainment and Participant Media. Meanwhile, Focus Features has committed $20 million to release A Monster Calls.

While Bayona is separately attached to helm a sequel to the zombie saga World War Z this film will come first.

Hispanically Yours

Celebrating the Latino Influence

Tag Archives: Carnegie Medal

Picturestart to Develop Film Adaptation of Elizabeth Acevedo’s Novel “With the Fire on High”

Focus Features to Release the Bayona-Directed “A Monster Calls” In October 2016

Bayona to Direct the Film Adaptation of “A Monster Calls”