Joseph O’Neill’s “Netherland” is one of the most widely acclaimed novels of the past few years. The New York Times called it “the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction we’ve yet had about life… after the World Trade Center fell,” and even President Obama has a copy on his bedside table. Now, The Observer reports that Oprah Winfrey’s production company has picked up the film rights, and it looks like they’ve attached a director and a writer.
The novel follows a Dutch stockbroker who, living in New York after separating from his wife, starts to play for a cricket team in Staten Island. The sporting link may well be what has attracted Sam Mendes to attach himself to the project – he’s a longtime fan of the game, and as legend has it, got his first job as much for his cricketing prowess as for his theater directing skills. Mendes now appears to have approached playwright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton (“Atonement,” “Dangerous Liaisons”) to work on the script. Hampton told The Observer “I am still not quite sure how I am going to do it, but I did think eventually, ‘Ah yes, I can see a way.’ “
And to be fair, it’s a tricky adaptation. “Netherland” isn’t particularly plot heavy, and is pretty certain to be a tricky sell to U.S. audiences, due to the sport’s fringe status. But it’s also one of the best novels we’ve read in years, and with the right approach, could make a hell of a movie. Our personal pick for director would be Spike Lee (he would nail the novel’s depiction of the immigrant community in NYC), but Mendes is a solid choice, and it sounds like a passion project for him. Hampton says, “He told me there really isn’t anybody else who could make this film, since he is both a film director and an expat cricket-lover living in New York.”
The director’s got a busy dance card at the moment, with adaptations of novels “Middlemarch” and western “Butcher’s Crossing” for Focus Features, and comic book “Preacher” at Columbia all in development, as well as his theater work, so this may be a way off. But as Mendes hasn’t committed to making any of the above his next project, this could find itself leaping up the slate, if Hampton can get the script right.
