Unless you are Shakespeare or Clancy, there are not too many others that get to enjoy book to screen adaptations of their work and these days, if your name is Tom Perrotta you can’t be complaining. After the 99’ Broderick/Witherspoon dark comedy called Election gave viewers/readers insight into overzealous teachers and students, this upcoming autumn we’ll get the equal opportunity to revel in the upcoming (and perhaps the best film of the year) Little Children. Knowing the great insight Perrotta has for suburban America, producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa who produced the two projects mentioned above under the Bona Fide Prods banner took this book to studios before it hit store shelves. The taker? Warner Independent Pictures.
Based on the upcoming 2007 novel due out next year from St. Martin’s Press, The Abstinence Teacher is about a divorced sex ed teacher forced by religious conservatives to teach abstinence. While fighting for the freedom to keep touting the joys of sex, she falls for a born-again soccer coach.
Making this the first grassroots production buy for Polly Cohen as head honcho over at the indie unit,
Variety quotes him as saying that “it fits in perfectly with the type of material we are looking for that maybe in the past no one would have thought we’d be interested in”. We here at ioncinema will keep a close eye on this one, with an eye at the possible directing candidates. Perhaps Todd Field might make it 2 for 2?