The Perks of Being Emma Watson

Emma Watson (with Logan Lerman) Perks of Being a Wallflower  PHOTO BY Shannon Vestal

Emma Watson seems to be having less trouble shedding her Harry Potter skin than Daniel Ratcliffe. Today I learned Watson has been cast in not one, but two new screen adaptations of popular novels! 

First up, Watson will reteam with Stephen Chbsosky who helmed the successful screen adaptation of his own novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower.  20th Century Fox has signed Chbosky to direct While We're Young based on the Adena Halpern novel, 29. What excites the hell out of my is that  (500) Days Of Summer scribes Michael H. Weber and Scott Neustadter are writing the adaptation. Not because I don't like Chbosky's writing - I enjoyed reading Perks (here's my take on the book) and Chbosky earned a Writer's Guild nomination for his Perks of Being a Wallflower script - but BECAUSE Neustadter and Weber are such amazing writers; besides Summer, their adaptation of Tim Tharpe's The Spectacular Now directed by James Ponsoldt was really remarkable. You can read my take on the film here. AND ... they wrote the script for The Fault in Our Stars, the film - currently shooting - based on the wildly popular book by John Greene.  I seriously can not wait to see what they will do with TFIOS and 29 in its' cinematic iteration as While We're Young. What a great title guys! If you haven't read the book, you can read the summary from Halpern's website below.  Hmmm. Who's gonna play 75 year young Ellie? 

Can I get a Jane Fonda in the house?? Or Judi Dench? It would be fun to see the grand Dame in something a little lighter than the Bond movies.

What if you closed your eyes, blew out the candles and your wish came true?

Ellie Jerome is a young-at-heart 75-year old who relates more to her 25-year old granddaughter Lucy than to her 55-year old daughter Barbara.  Ellie’s done everything she can to stay young, and the last thing she wants is to celebrate another birthday. So when she finds herself confronted with a cake full of candles, Ellie wishes more than anything that she could be twenty-nine again, just for one day.  But who expects a wish like that to come true?

Check in with Halpern on her website, facebook, or tweet her at @AdenaHalp

AND

then there's Your Voice in My Head, Emma Forrests' memoir about life as a young bipolar Englishwoman living in NYC. I know she was seeing Colin Farrell for almost a year; anyone know if he made the page?; I think it was before his time. Anyway, Ms. Forrest is going to write the script and the film should arrive mid-2014.

The paperback comes out October 14th. Tweet Ms Forrest at @girlInterrupter