"Silver Linings Playbook" finally goes properly wide this weekend, hitting just under 3000 screens today, but it's already a fairly unqualified success. Boasting rave reviews, $43 million already in the bank without having gone over 810 screens, and most importantly, eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director and nods in all four acting categories, making it the first film since "Reds" to do so. To help get the word out, The Weinstein Company have just dropped a brand new, lengthy 12 minute featurette on the movie which is worth a look whether you've seen a movie or not.
Given the film's success, it's not surprising that people are starting to look for the next "Silver Linings Playbook," and it might have arrived, in the shape of a new book from Matthew Quick, author of… the original "Silver Linings Playbook." Quick has his fourth novel, "The Good Luck Of Right Now," on the way, due to be published by HarperCollins in Spring 2014, and according to Variety, DreamWorks have snapped up the rights.
The new book seems to be very much of a piece with the quirky romance of 'Silver Linings:' told through a series of letters to Richard Gere (cameo alert!), it involves a quirky man caring for his dementia-suffering mother, who falls for a librarian who believes that she was abducted by aliens as a child. Two other characters are set to feature in what's described as a tale of "four outsiders who, amid grieving over pain and loss in their lives, come together to form a most unlikely family." DreamWorks production president Holly Bario commented, "We immediately sparked to Matthew Quick's book and the heart and humor which is infused in his storytelling. All of us at DreamWorks are excited to begin developing this story and look to make it a priority at the studio."
There's no talent attached at present, but clearly the studio are high on the book, so we could see movement on this fairly swiftly, and the film, unless it gets lost in development hell, should be in theaters not too long after the book's release.