About A Boy screenwriter Nick Hornby has signed on to adapt Wild, the bestselling memoir by Cheryl Strayed about her solo journey on the Pacific Crest Trail.
Therefore, Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right) is no longer involved. The movie rights were bought by Reese Witherspoon's production company Pacific Standard as well as by producer Bruna Papandrea, and Witherspoon is set to star as Strayed in the movie.
When it was announced that Witherspoon will be bringing the movie to the screen, Strayed said:
I couldn't be more thrilled when it was announced that Witherspoon will be bringing the movie to the screen and playing her. “She's such a wonderful combination of smart and charming. I really feel like she saw my vision and is the perfect person to bring it to the screen. If a genie gave me three wishes about who would play the part, she would be my first wish.
Now Witherspoon said:
Nick's innate blend of humanity and humor are a perfect match for Cheryl's raw emotional memoir. I look forward to collaborating with both of these talented writers to create a film full of honesty, adventure and self discovery.
British screenwriter added:
I loved Cheryl Strayed's memoir. It's moving, funny, painful and brave, and the moment I'd finished it I wanted someone to let me have a go at adapting it, because it was clear to me that it could make a wonderful movie. I'm thrilled to be given the chance; the fact that this chance was given to me by Reese Witherspoon, a great actress who feels exactly the same way about the book as I do, makes this project all the more exciting.
Check out the book trailer below.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks_QnNQ__OM[/youtube]
The book is described as follows:
A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she'd lost everything when her mother died young of cancer. Her family scattered in their grief, her marriage was soon destroyed, and slowly her life spun out of control. Four years after her mother's death, with nothing more to lose, Strayed made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker–indeed, she'd never gone backpacking before her first night on the trail. Her trek was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone. Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and intense loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
Source: Deadline, Cheryl Strayed
