Prison Dog Training Memoir ‘Weekends With Daisy’ Headed to Big Screen (Exclusive)

CBS Films has pre-emptively grabbed film rights to the forthcoming memoir Weekends with Daisy, written by Sharron Kahn Luttrell.

With elements of The Blind Side, Luttrell’s story details how as a middle-class freelance journalist in New England she decided to volunteer for an inmate dog-training program. By taking a labrador puppy on the weekends to continue its training in the outside world, Luttrell eventually formed a deepening relationship with both the dog and the male convict who was training her in prison. (Much of the U.S. service-dog population is trained by prisoners.)

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Lauren Shuler Donner and Jack Leslie of the Donners’ Company are producing the project. Both execs have long been involved in supporting similar inmate dog-training programs. Execs Mark Ross and Ryan Conroy are overseeing for the studio.

Gotham Group’s Ellen Goldsmith-Vein and Luke Sandler repped the sale of the book’s film rights. Daisy is currently out to publishers, though no deal has yet been set.

CBS films is in production on Seven Psychopaths and 7500, while its Toronto acquisition Salmon Fishing in the Yemen will open in theaters in March. The company will next release The Woman in Black in February.

The Donners’ Company most recently produced the Fox actioner X-Men: First Class, which grossed $354 million worldwide this year.