Everything Everthing J. Mills Goodloe Split - H 2015
Courtesy of Delacorte Press; AP ImagesA version of this story first appeared in the Sept. 4 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
MGM has optioned the rights to YA novel Everything, Everything, which centers on a 17-year-old girl who is allergic to everything.
J. Mills Goodloe, who wrote the script for the Blake Lively starrer Age of Adaline, will adapt the book for the big screen.
Nicola Yoon‘s debut novel, which will hit shelves Sept. 1 via Random House’s Delacorte, follows Maddy, a teen who has severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), a rare disease that causes her to be allergic to practically everything. She’s spent 17 years hiding out in her home, only seeing her mother and her nurse, Carla. But when a boy named Olly moves in next door, Maddy begins to fall in love.
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The book, which has been compared to the popular and charming YA books Eleanor and Park and The Fault in Our Stars, reveals Maddy and Olly’s story through vignettes, diary entries, texts, charts, lists, illustrations and more. It will debut in 22 territories and in 21 languages.
Les Morgenstein and Elysa Dutton of Alloy Entertainment Features will produce. Alloy also repped the book in the film deal.
Goodloe has a knack for adapting romantic tales for the big screen. He wrote the script for The Best of Me, the adaptation of Nicholas Sparks‘ novel that starred James Marsden and Michelle Monaghan. The film has earned $35.9 million to date. He also wrote the original script for romantic drama The Age of Adaline, which starred Lively as a woman who is rendered ageless by an accident.
Goodloe also worked on the script for Fox’s The Mountain Between Us, a romantic drama that will star Rosamund Pike and Charlie Hunnam as two strangers who survive a plane crash in the mountains. He’s repped by UTA.
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While many YA adaptations in recent years have been based on dystopian or futuristic tales, such as The Hunger Games, Divergent and The Maze Runner, there’s been a slew of book options lately that have focused on unique, real-world-set issues that teens face as they also deal with falling in love for the first time.
The adaptation of John Green‘s The Fault in Our Stars, starring Shailene Woodley as a teen with cancer, for example, was a huge hit for Fox after hitting theaters in June 2014. It earned $307.2 million worldwide.
And MGM previously teamed with New Line on If I Stay, which starred Chloe Grace Moretz as a teen who, after a horrible car crash takes the lives of her parents, must decide if she’ll fight to live or die. It earned $78.3 million worldwide.
While the books in this trend center on teens who are dealing with sickness or death, as with Fault or Fox Searchlight’s Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, the stories are often more light than dark, presenting hope in the face of adversity and exploring young love that often overcomes the challenges life has thrown at the main characters.
There are several other books in development that are in the same vein: Lionsgate is adapting R.J. Palacio‘s best-selling novel Wonder, about a kid with a facial deformity; and Elle Fanning is attached to star in All the Bright Places, about a girl who befriends a teen who intends to die.
