Yesterday, Stephenie Meyer caused Twilight fans to have a mini-freakout when she announced that a spin off novella, “The Short Second Life Of Bree Tanner” would hit book stores on June 5th, just a few weeks ahead of “Twlight: Eclipse” landing in theaters. But the “Twilight” books aren’t the only Meyer work getting ready to the big screen.
Today, Deadline Hollywood has updated the progress of the big screen adaptation of Meyer’s first adult novel “The Host.” Last fall it was reported that Andrew Niccol (“Gattaca,” “Lord Of War”) had been brought on board to write and direct the film. Well, it appears progress is happening however painstaking it may be.
Niccol is now on his third draft of the script and working closely with Meyer on the “love story set in the near future, when the Earth has been overrun by benevolent alien parasites that call themselves “souls” and take over the consciousness of humans. The book is about a “soul” called Wanderer, which fuses with a dying woman named Melanie Stryder, bent on discovering the whereabouts of the last pocket of surviving humans. Wanderer, a veteran assimilator, struggles with the dogged determination of the woman to retain her identity and values.” So we’re guessing it’s like “The Road” meets “V” meets “Romeo & Juliet”? Maybe one our readers can help us out because it’s not like we’re actually going to read the book or anything.
Even though Niccol hasn’t directed a film since 2005’s “Lord Of War,” and seems to be a non-entity in Hollywood — Niccol had written the “The City That Sailed” as a potential directing vehicle for himself before he was dumped for Francis Lawrence — Meyer has given the helmer a personal thumbs up. Producer Steve Schwartz explains, “We asked Stephenie what her favorite science fiction movies were, and one of them was ‘Gattaca’. We spent time with Andrew, listened to his vision, introduced Andrew to Stephenie and she responded. There is very good chemistry in this group. Stephenie is a very smart collaborator, and she had an intuitive strong hunch he would be the right guy. Based on the script we’ve seen, we think she was right. We’re thinking this will be shot in early 2011.”
We’re assuming the 2011 start will allow Meyer to finish overseeing work on “Breaking Dawn” this fall. As for Niccol, we’re going to assume that his once ready-to-go sci-fi pic “The Cross” that had Orlando Bloom, Olga Kurylenko, Vincent Cassel and John Goodman attached is on the backburner for now.