The bestselling romantic comedy Book Lovers from Emily Henry is poised to be adapted by Tango, Lia Bumun’s film and television development financier and producer. Sarah Heyward, best known for writing and producing HBO’s Girls, is set to write the script. Heyward also worked on Amazon’s Modern Love as well as SKAM Austin on Facebook Watch.
Tango recently found success in the feature film Shortcomings, which appeared at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and was shortly acquired by Sony Pictures Classics. Depicting three Asian American urbanites as they grapple with the implications of race and culture on the Bay Area dating scene, Shortcomings is based on Eisner-winning cartoonist Adrian Tomine’s graphic novel of the same name. With a star-studded cast of Justin H. Min, Sherry Cola, Ally Maki, Tavi Gevinson, and Debby Ryan, casting expectations for Book Lovers are set high.
The novel follows Nora, a cutthroat literary agent who, convinced by her sister to spend an August holiday in North Carolina, keeps running into Charlie, a bookish, brooding editor from the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times and it’s never been cute. If Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again — in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow — what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.
Book Lovers was published in 2022 by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House, and became an instant #1 New York Times and#1 USA Today bestseller. In addition to being named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Oprah Daily, the novel was named the 2022 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Romance. Henry earned the same award in 2021 with her New York Times Bestseller People We Meet on Vacation—which is currently being adapted into a feature film directed by Brett Haley—and came second on the list in 2020 with her New York Times Bestseller Beach Read. Henry’s next novel, Happy Place, is slated for release at the end of April 2023.
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