Sarah Polley has hit an enviable creative groove. After the director caught everyone’s attention with 2006’s “Away From Her,” she pivoted to the messy but emotionally affecting “Take This Waltz,” and then delivered the terrific, genre-pushing documentary “Stories We Tell.” She’s currently at work on delivering her TV series adaptation of Margaret Atwood‘s “Alias Grace” for Netflix, and now has a new feature cooking which sounds right in her wheelhouse.
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THR reveals that Polley will write and direct an adaptation of Zoe Whittall‘s “The Best Kind Of People.” The story follows the Woodbury family, who must deal with the fallout when father and husband George Woodbury is accused of a sex crime. Here’s the book synopsis:
The Woodburys cherish life in the affluent, bucolic suburb of Avalon Hills, Connecticut. George is a beloved science teacher at the local prep school, a hero who once thwarted a gunman, and his wife, Joan, is a hardworking ER nurse. They have brought up their children in this thriving town of wooded yards and sprawling lakes.
Then one night a police car pulls up to the Woodbury home and George is charged with sexual misconduct — with students from his daughter’s school. As he sits in prison awaiting trial and claiming innocence — is it possible? — Joan vaults between denial and rage as friends and neighbors turn cold. Their daughter, seventeen-year-old Sadie, is a popular high school senior who becomes a social outcast — and finds refuge in an unexpected place. Her brother, Andrew, a lawyer in New York, returns home to support the family, only to confront unhappy memories from his past. A writer tries to exploit their story, while an unlikely men’s rights activist group attempts to recruit Sadie for their cause.
Wow, that sounds like knockout source material, and while we don’t want to get too greedy with “Alias Grace” on the way, let’s hope we’re not waiting too long for “The Best Kind Of People” to get going.