Dawson’s Creek‘s Joshua Jackson has been cast in a leading role in Hulu’s adaptation of Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere. Published 2017, written by Celeste Ng’s second novel is about two families living in 1990s Shaker Heights who are brought together through their children. Shaker Heights is Ng’s hometown and she described writing about her hometown as “a little bit like writing about a relative. You see all of the great things about them, you love them dearly, and yet you also know all of their quirks and their foibles.
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The Kenyon Review wrote that the novel “shows a particular place and time that makes us reflect on the limits of our own views and consider the spiderwebs of connection, conflict, privilege, and exclusion that we, too, create,” and, despite not liking the novel overall, The Guardian still described it as “well crafted”, saying that “[t]he characters are vividly drawn. The author manages a large cast, multiple points of view, and all three rings of her circus with grace and authority”.
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The book was voted as the winner of the Goodreads Choice Awards for fiction in 2017. The Hollywood Reporter wrote about the long history with the adaptation, despite the book barely even being two years old. Before the book was even published, “[Reese] Witherspoon’s company, Hello Sunshine, snatched up the rights…and brought it to fellow star and exec. producer Kerry Washington”.
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Reese Witherspoon, June Carter-Cash in Walk The Line and Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, and Kerry Washington, who portrayed Broomhilda von Shaft in Django Unchained and Olivia Pope in Scandal, then went to Liz Tigelaar, who agreed to adapted the novel and serve as series showrunner.
Soon afterwards, ABC Signature agreed to executive produce “the series alongside Hello Sunshine and Simpson Street” and Tigelaar, Lauren Neustadter, Pilar Savone, producer of Django Unchained and associate producer for Inglourious Basterds, and Lynn Shelton, director of We Go Way Back and Humpday, all came on board as executive producers.
Streaming platform Hulu ended up winning a bidding war for the whole package.
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Now joining this all star team is Joshua Jackson, perhaps best known as Pacey in Dawson’s Creek, who is set to portray Bill Richardon.
As of today, the cast list is as follows:
Joshua Jackson will play Bill Richardson, an attorney and husband to Elena.
Elena an engetic and strong willed 3rd generation resident of Shaker Heights who writes for the local paper, will be portrayed by Reese Witherspoon.
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Jade Pettyjohn, who played Shelby in Destroyer, will play Lexie Richardson, the oldest Richardson child and a senior in high school. Jordan Elsass, who played Kyle in People with Issues, will be Trip Richardson, the second oldest Richardson child who is a jock.
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Gavin Lewis will be Moody Richardson, a well-meaning child who introduces Pearl to his family and develops a crush on her.
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Megan Stott will be Izzy Richardson, a black sheep of the family who rejects the Richardsons upper-middle class lifestyle.
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Kerry Washington will be Mia Warren, a photographer and single mother. Lexi Underwood will be Pearl Warren, a kind child who doesn’t know who her father is and is the same age as Moody.
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Rosemarie DeWitt, who played Laura Wilder in La La Land, will be Linda McCullough, a childhood friend of Elena’s, whose adoption of a Chinese baby causes controversy in the close-knit community.
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No word yet on who has been cast as Bebe Chow, Mia’s co-worker who wants her abandoned baby back from the McCulloughs and ends up in a custody battle with them, or who has been cast as Mirabelle McCullough/May Ling Chow, the daughter at the heart of the custody battle, but we’ll keep you updated!
The Little Fires Everywhere adaptation is shaping up nicely! The novel is a 2017 release by Celeste Ng and takes place in fictional suburb Shaker Heights, a sleepy neighborhood where everyone plays by the rules and nothing really exciting happens—especially not to Elena Richardson, a more affluent resident. That is, nothing really exciting happens until artist and single mother called Mia Warren bursts into the community with her teenage daughter and rents a house from the Richardsons. She disregards the rules of the community entirely, and drama soon explodes between the two families as the Richardsons clash with the Warrens. It’s a drama full of secrets and fascinating thematic representations of motherhood, masterfully explored through different angles of life.
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According to Variety, the series has been picked up by Hulu as a limited miniseries. The adaptation will be directed by Lynn Shelton, who is also set to executive produce the show. The cast includes superstars Reese Witherspoon, Kerry Washington, and Rosemarie DeWitt. Also in the cast are Jade Pettyjohn, Jordan Elsass, Gavin Lewis, Megan Stott, and Lexi Underwood. Shelton will direct the premiere and finale of the show, along with two additional episodes. According to the official synopsis, the series “follows the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and an enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives. The story explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger in believing that following the rules can avert disaster.”
The series is highly anticipated and will be 8 episodes long, according to TVSeriesFinale. Reese Witherspoon will star as Elena while Mia Warren will be played by Kerry Washington. Jade Pettyjohn will play Lexie Richardson, Jordan Elsass will star as Trip Richardson, Gavin Lewis as Moody Richardson, Megan Stott as Izzy Richardson, and Lexi Underwood as Pearl Warren.
It remains unknown when the series will be debut, but it appears to be well underway! We can’t wait to see the series come to life; it sounds like a guaranteed binge-watch! Are you excited to see Little Fires Everywhere come to life? We certainly are! Tell us your thoughts in the comments!
Celeste Ng, whether you have heard the name or not, is one of the most powerful writers of our time. Her books have weaved themselves seamlessly into the lives of more than two and a quarter million people. It is a staggering number of souls that many authors strive to infiltrate. Her debut novel Everything You Never Told Me will soon hit the big screen and will star the gifted Julia Roberts. Meanwhile, her other novel Little Fires Everywhere is being developed for television by Hello Sunshine, which is a production company founded by Reese Witherspoon.
In her books, she illustrates the struggles that many face in the United States, predominantly in relation to race. Everything I Never Told You tells the story of the daughter of an interracial couple. It takes place in the 70s, which means it had only just become legal to marry someone who was not your race in the United States. This book is a beautifully written demonstration of what it is like to come from an immigrant family and how race effects not only life outside your family, but within it. It provides a glimpse into a family dynamic that is delicate and full of history. Little Fires Everywhere follows a family who wants to adopt a Chinese-American baby abandoned by her mother and how this situations divides their suburban Ohio town. It highlights a powerful points about class, race and family and became one of last year’s most popular books. Ng explores characters so fluidly that we as readers start to explore the characters ourselves. Ng’s writing transcends these pieces into works of art that penetrates the hearts of readers.
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Ng uses not just her books, but her platform, for literary activism. In just the past month, she joined a bunch of other writers who are calling for the right to give their characters rights in their future novels; this is to raise money for immigrant families who wish to reunite with their families. Her twitter has a following of 95,000 followers and instead of using this platform for just herself, she uses it as a platform for voices, she believes, deserve to be heard.
Image Via Celeste Ng Twitter
Being a daughter of immigrants from Hong Kong, Ng said in an interview with the New York Times that she “doesn’t want to be the single story of the young, Asian-American woman writer” and that she wants people to know that “there are lots of other Asian women, even Chinese-American women, who are doing all kinds of stuff that I’m doing.” Celeste will continue to use her stance to help those be heard who deserve to be heard and encouraging us writers to continue with our voices.
Champion of book adaptations Reese Witherspoon is teaming up with Kerry Washington to topline and executive produce a limited series based on Celeste Ng’s bestseller Little Fires Everywhere, Deadline has revealed. The book was Witherspoon’s Book Club x Hello Sunshine’s September 2017 book pick.
The project came together at ABC Signature, with Hello Sunshine and ABC Signature serving as studio co-production partners on the show. Casual writer Liz Tigelaar will serve as executive producer and showrunner, as well as writing the show. Celeste Ng will act as producer.
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The novel follows two families in early 1990s Shaker Heights, Ohio, where Ng grew up. The Richardsons and the Warrens are brought together by their children, while the town is shaken by a custody battle over an adopted baby. It explores themes of loyalty, race, class, and coming of age.
I am currently reading it and can confirm that it will translate to TV extremely well.
A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.
Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother’s sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she’d never return.
With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present.
Beware a calm surface—you never know what lies beneath.
The film will be made by Dreamworks, and Paula Hawkins will executive produce. Jared LeBoff and La La Land‘s Marc Platt will produce.
In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep: they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent. And while they sleep they go to another place, a better place, where harmony prevails and conflict is rare.
One woman, the mysterious “Eve Black,” is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease. Is Eve a medical anomaly to be studied? Or is she a demon who must be slain? Abandoned, left to their increasingly primal urges, the men divide into warring factions, some wanting to kill Eve, some to save her. Others exploit the chaos to wreak their own vengeance on new enemies. All turn to violence in a suddenly all-male world.
Set in a small Appalachian town whose primary employer is a women’s prison, Sleeping Beauties is a wildly provocative, gloriously dramatic father-son collaboration that feels particularly urgent and relevant today.
The rights have been purchased by Anonymous Content, with Stephen and Owen both co-creating what will be a TV series. Oscar-winning producer Michael Sugarand Ashley Zalta will produce.
From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You, a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives.
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother – who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town–and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.
Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.
Hello Sunshine, Reese Witherspoon’s production company, has optioned the book for a television series.
February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy’s body.
From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul.
Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction’s ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?
Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally will be producing the movie adaptation along with Saunders.
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.
Smart, warm, uplifting, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .
Reese’s Hello Sunshine strikes again, with rumors she will star in the film!
Pay close attention and you might solve this.
On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention.
Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule.
Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess.
Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing.
Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher.
AndSimon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High’s notorious gossip app.
Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention Simon’s dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn’t an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he’d planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who’s still on the loose?
Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.
E! is developing this Breakfast Club-inspired thriller into a television series.
Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men.
Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, the reasons he might have vanished.
With the atmosphere of a noir thriller, Egan’s first historical novel follows Anna and Styles into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men. Manhattan Beach is a deft, dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world. It is a magnificent novel by the author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, one of the great writers of our time.
The book has been acquired byby Scott Rudin Productions, but we’re not yet sure if it will be a movie or series.
by Stephen King and Owen King
by Celeste Ng
by George Saunders 
by Gail Honeyman 
by Karen M. McManus
by Jennifer Egan
