The transformation of Nick Hornby from one of the major literary pioneers with a sort of sensitive Generation X masculinity (as with “Fever Pitch,” “High Fidelity” and “About A Boy”), to an Oscar-nominated screenwriter with particularly well-drawn female leads, is a fascinating one. Hornby made his screenwriting transition and picked up an Oscar nod, with “An Education” a few years back, and followed it up with last year’s “Wild,” before this year’s much-acclaimed “Brooklyn,” which seems all-but-certain to throw him into awards chat again.
READ MORE: Sundance Review: Nick Hornby-Scripted ‘Brooklyn’
He’s got the Helena Bonham Carter-starring BBC miniseries “Love, Nina” coming soon, but tells Jeff Goldsmith’s Q&A podcast that he’s got some terrific new projects coming up as well. First up is a twenty-minute drama for music video and VR pioneering director Chris Milk, which he says was “cooked up” by Milk and Spike Jonze. Beyond that, he’s writing an original comedy script for his “An Education” breakout Rosamund Pike, entitled “Everybody Loves You,” which is intended to shoot next spring, and says that he’s currently finishing up a project for Jason Reitman about a family of bank robbers, as revealed next year.
It’s a diverse and exciting stuff for a writer who admits that he’s currently doing more in the screenplay world than in the literary one (though his last book, “Funny Girl,” was terrific, and ripe for adaptation). Hornby’s also hit up the Nerdist podcast too: you can listen to the latter below, to Goldsmith’s full podcast here, and watch the excellent “Brooklyn” in theaters now.