Julia Roberts to Play Eleanor Flood in TV Adaptation of 'Today Will Be Different'

I just read Maria Semple’s latest novel Today Will Be Different because I enjoyed Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette, so much. While I didn’t enjoy it as much as Bernadette, neither the character or the crazed frenetic journey we go on, it was still a fun ride. 

Have you heard that like Where'd You Go, Bernadette, Today Will Be Different will also adapted for the screen? The story is also set in Seattle with the familiar Galer Street School playing a pivotal part. The big surprise is that Julia Roberts will be playing the most important role—that of Eleanor Flood—and that the book is headed to television as a limited series, as opposed to the big screen. 

Here’s the skinny on the book

Named a Notable Book of 2016 by the Washington Post, a Must-Read Book of 2016 by PopSugar, one of EW's 20 Best Books of 2016, and one of Kirkus Reviews' "Best 100 Fiction Books of 2016" A brilliant novel from the author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette, about a day in the life of Eleanor Flood, forced to abandon her small ambitions and awake to a strange, new future. Eleanor knows she's a mess. But today, she will tackle the little things. She will shower and get dressed. She will have her poetry and yoga lessons after dropping off her son, Timby. She won't swear. She will initiate sex with her husband, Joe. But before she can put her modest plan into action-life happens. Today, it turns out, is the day Timby has decided to fake sick to weasel his way into his mother's company. It's also the day Joe has chosen to tell his office-but not Eleanor-that he's on vacation. Just when it seems like things can't go more awry, an encounter with a former colleague produces a graphic memoir whose dramatic tale threatens to reveal a buried family secret. TODAY WILL BE DIFFERENT is a hilarious, heart-filled story about reinvention, sisterhood, and how sometimes it takes facing up to our former selves to truly begin living.

Not sure when Today Will Be Different starts filming or when we can expect to see it on our big screens. Maria Semple is writing the screenplay. Probably a good time to remind you Semple got her start in television, writing for Mad About You in the 1990’s and more recently Arrested Development. The comedy, it seems, is in her genes.

Where’d You Go Bernadette is still listed as being in development but haven’t heard anything beyond the script has been written, Cate Blanchett is attached as Bernadette, with Richard Linklater set to direct. I wonder which of Maria Semple’s novels makes it to the screen first?

What do you think of Roberts as Eleanor?