Poets & Writers Theater

In 1964, the memoirist, novelist, and biographer James Lord sat for a portrait for the artist Alberto Giacometti. The painting session was intended to take only a few hours, but lasted weeks and became the inspiration for Lord’s book A Giacometti Portrait (Doubleday, 1965). In this film adaptation of the book, The Final Portrait, written and directed by Stanley Tucci, Armie Hammer stars as Lord with Geoffrey Rush as Giacometti.

Ray Bradbury’s classic dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451 (Ballantine Books, 1953), has been adapted into a feature film for HBO. Directed by Ramin Bahrani, the film stars Michael B. Jordan as Guy Montag and Michael Shannon as Captain Beatty.

You Were Never Really Here, Jonathan Ames’s crime thriller about a tormented gunman hired to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a senator, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Lynne Ramsay, the film stars Alessandro Nivola, Joaquin Phoenix, and Ekaterina Samsonov.

Ernest Cline’s debut novel, Ready Player One (Crown, 2011), a dystopian science fiction adventure following a teenager’s quest for fortune through a virtual reality game, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Steven Spielberg with a screenplay by Cline and Zak Penn, the film stars Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, and Tye Sheridan.

The Man Who Invented Christmas (Crown, 2008), a biography by Les Standiford focusing on the events in 1843 that inspired Charles Dickens to write A Christmas Carol, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Bharat Nalluri, the film stars Christopher Plummer, Jonathan Pryce, and Dan Stevens.

Dan Stevens, who stars as Charles Dickens in The Man Who Invented Christmas, talks about researching Dickens’s life and learning more about his writing process for A Christmas Carol. Directed by Bharat Nalluri and costarring Christopher Plummer and Jonathan Pryce, the film is based on Les Standiford’s 2008 Dickens biography of the same name.

“A few years ago I used to tell myself I wanted to marry a cowboy.” In this short film produced by Park Pictures, director Alison Maclean adapts Lydia Davis’s short story about an English professor who fantasizes about a life of adventure. “The Professor” is included in Davis’s collection The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009).

“Violence is part and parcel of country life.” Hillary Jordan’s debut novel, Mudbound (Algonquin Books, 2008), which won the 2006 Bellwether Prize, has been adapted into a feature film. Set in post–World War II in the Mississippi Delta, the film was directed and written by Dee Rees and stars Carey Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Mitchell, and Mary J. Blige.

Annihilation (FSG Originals, 2017), the first novel in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy series, has been adapted into a feature film. Written and directed by Alex Garland, the film stars Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, and Oscar Isaac.

Agatha Christie’s mystery novel Murder on the Orient Express (Dodd, Mead and Company, 1934) has been adapted into a new feature film directed by Kenneth Branagh. Branagh stars in the film as detective Hercule Poirot, along with Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Daisy Ridley.

“This city is full / of stranger things than a man collecting foil.” This short film is an adaptation of a poem of the same title by Matthew Yeager, author of Like That (Forklift Books, 2016) and cocurator of the KGB Monday Night Poetry Series. Directed by Sean Logan, the film features a drum score by tabla player Marcus Wise.

“This is a story about what makes us different and about having the courage to find the place where we belong.” In this film adaptation of Brian Selznick’s novel Wonderstruck (Scholastic Press, 2011), two children from two different eras set out on quests in New York City. Directed by Todd Haynes with a screenplay by Selznick, the film stars Oakes Fegley, Julianne Moore, Millicent Simmonds, and Michelle Williams.

The Snowman (Knopf, 2011), the crime novel written by Jo Nesbø and translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Tomas Alfredson, the film stars Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Val Kilmer, and Chloë Sevigny.

Danny Strong’s directorial debut, Rebel in the Rye, is a biopic portraying J. D. Salinger’s earlier years, focusing on his service during World War II and the 1951 publication of The Catcher in the Rye. The film is adapted from Kenneth Slawenski’s biography J. D. Salinger: A Life (Random House, 2011), and stars Zoey Deutch, Nicholas Hoult, and Kevin Spacey.

In this film adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 supernatural horror novel, It, seven children are terrorized by a shape-shifting being that appears in the form of an evil clown. Directed by Andrés Muschietti, the film stars Chosen Jacobs, Jaeden Lieberher, Bill Skarsgård, and Finn Wolfhard.

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 science fiction fantasy novel about a thirteen-year-old girl who travels through space and time in search of her scientist father, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Ava DuVernay, the film stars Mindy Kaling, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Chris Pine, Storm Reid, Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Zack Galifianakis.

The Glass Castle (Scribner, 2005), the best-selling debut memoir by Jeannette Walls about her childhood in a nomadic family dealing with dysfunction and poverty, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, the film stars Woody Harrelson, Brie Larson, and Naomi Watts.

Based on the 1966 Southern gothic novel by Thomas Cullinan, The Beguiled takes place during the Civil War as a young, injured Union Army corporal is taken in at a Southern girls’ boarding school. This film adaptation is written and directed by Sofia Coppola and stars Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, and Colin Farrell.

Poet and actress Amber Tamblyn makes her directorial debut with the film adaptation of Janet Fitch’s novel Paint It Black (Little, Brown, 2006), which stars Janet McTeer, Alfred Molina, and Alia Shawkat. The film is set in the 1980s Los Angeles punk scene and follows a young woman dealing with the aftermath of her boyfriend’s death, and her conflicted relationship with his grieving mother.

The Dark Tower is a film sequel to Stephen King’s eight-novel series of the same name, which was published between 1982 and 2004 and inspired by Robert Browning’s poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.” Directed by Nikolaj Arcel and starring Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, and Katheryn Winnick, the film will premiere in August.