‘Looking for Alaska’ Taps Rebecca Thomas to Direct

Relative newcomer Rebecca Thomas has been hired to direct Looking for Alaska, Paramount’s adaptation of John Green‘s debut novel.

Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, who wrote the screenplays for both Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns, are also adapting Alaska. Fault and Paper Towns producers Temple Hill are also onboard to produce, as The Hollywood Reporter exclusively reported.

Green’s 2005 book centers on a teen named Miles (who, in his spare time, memorizes the final words of famous people) as he goes to boarding school for his junior year. There, he meets a enigmatic student named Alaska and begins to fall for her.

Green announced the news to his four million-plus followers on Twitter.

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Temple Hill will produce with Mark Waters and Jessica Tuchinsky via their Watermark Pictures banner. Neustadter and Weber will executive produce.

Paramount and the produces made a concerted effort to find a fresh face to sit in the director’s chair and were hoping to snag a female one at that. Thomas only has one feature to credit, the 2012 teen drama Electrick Children. 

In the end, the search came down to Thomas and Gia Coppola (Palo Alto) although Michael Johnson and Josh Greenbaum were also in the mix.

Green’s debut novel Looking for Alaska hit shelves in 2005 and went on to win the Michael L. Printz Award in 2006. Paramount scooped up the rights in 2005, but the studio waited to move forward on the project until after Fault became a massive success. (It’s earned $307.2 million worldwide.) The film adaptation of Paper Towns, starring Nat Wolff and Cara Delevingne, will hit theaters on July 24 via Fox.

Thomas is repped by CAA, Principato-Young and Hansen, Jacobson.

Coppola, the granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola and niece of Sofia Coppola, directed the 2013 film Palo Alto, starring Emma Roberts, James Franco and Nat Wolff. She’s repped by CAA.

Thomas helmed Electrick Children, a 2012 film starring Julia Garner and Rory Culkin. It premiered at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival and in the U.S. at South by Southwest in March 2012.