Today's Film News: Nick Hornby Helps Us All Come of Age

By Katey Rich

Orlando Bloom, Alfred Molina, and recent Berlin Silver Bear winner Sally Hawkins have joined the cast of the British coming-of-age tale An Education. Producers announced a few days ago that Emma Thompson, Peter Sarsgaard and Olivia Thirlby, among others, would also star. Novelist Nick Hornby is writing the screenplay, based on the memoir by Lynn Barber.

Sounding kind of like the other side of the mirror from The Watchmen, graphic novel The Boys will be getting its own big-screen adaptation thanks to producer Neal Moritz at Sony. Written by Darick Robertson and Garth Ennis, the book follows a CIA squad assigned to keep superheroes in line. The Watchmen, if you recall, is about superheroes who are under suspicion by the government. And the movie industry, if you recall, is so jam-packed with superhero stories that's it hard to do anything with this story than just throw it onto the pile, no matter how good it might be. Variety has the full details if you didn't already hear the phrase "graphic novel adaptation" and tuned out.

Given the amount of CGI work in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, it's not a real surprise that their director, Gore Verbinski, will be headed next into a fully animated project. Graham King, who produced The Departed, will team up with Verbinski to produce the under-wraps action-adventure film; King has a first-look deal with Warner Bros., so it seems likely the project will head there first. The Hollywood Reporter also tells us that Sweeney Todd screenwriter John Logan will write the thing up, with sequels obviously in mind. The connection between Pirates and Sweeney makes me hope for Johnny Depp to appear as a Sweeney-Jack Sparrow hybrid, which is pretty much the only thing to get excited about since there's not a single plot detail available. Cold comfort, but a girl's gotta dream.

I don't even have it in me to tell you about the 600th graphic novel adaptation announced by Warner Bros. in the last year. This time it's the six-volume anime graphic novel series Akira. Variety has the full details, and I'll leave it to you to tell me if this is promising or just the same-old same-old.