Brace yourselves, book lovers: another story about book burning is coming to the small screen, and this one is based on a true story. Less than a year after HBO debuted an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s classic sci-fi novel “Fahrenheit 451” comes word that “Paramount Television and Anonymous Content, in association with Brillstein Entertainment, have acquired the TV rights to Susan Orlean’s best-seller ‘The Library Book,'” Variety reports.
Released in 2018, Orlean’s non-fiction book investigates the fire that raged for more than seven hours in the Los Angeles Public Library on April 28, 1986. Over 400,000 books were lost and 700,000 damaged. “More than thirty years later, the mystery surrounding how the fire began remains,” the source hints.
Orlean will adapt the book for TV alongside James Ponsoldt (“The End of the Tour”). Both will serve as exec producers, and the latter will direct the pilot.
Orlean commented, “I am so excited to see this book leap from the page to the screen and tell the story of a place that’s so well-loved and complex and interesting. I’ve been a fan of James’ since his first film, and to have Paramount Television and Anonymous Content as our partners, with their great respect for writers and writing, makes this my dream team.”
“Susan has created a captivating narrative that is part mystery, part magic, and part love letter to the dedicated stewards who fight to keep these beloved institutions alive,” added Nicole Clemens, president of Paramount TV. “Each day at the library, the human drama that unfolds among staff and patrons of every socio-economic level – funny, sad, inspiring, unexpected – speaks to the highs and lows of our country right now, and we’re excited to bring these stories to life on screen.”
“I grew up in libraries, or so it seems,” Orlean has said. “My mother and I would take regular trips to the branch library near my house at least twice a week, and those trips were enchanted. The very air in the library seemed charged with possibility and imagination; books seem to have their own almost human vitality. But over time, I had become more of a book buyer than a book borrower, and I had begun to forget how magical libraries are. I never stopped loving libraries, but they receded in my mind, and seemed like a piece of my past,” she explained. “And then I started taking my own son to the library, and I was reminded instantly and vividly of how much libraries had meant to me, how formative they were to my love of reading and writing, and how much they mean to us as a culture. The next thing I knew, I was investigating the largest library fire in the history of the United States. The life and times and near-death experience of the Los Angeles Public Library was a story that felt urgent to tell, and gave me a chance to pay tribute to these marvelous places that have been such an essential part of my life.”
Surf pic “Blue Crush” is based on Orlean’s 2002 article “Life’s Swell,” and her 1998 non-fiction book “The Orchid Thief” served as the inspiration for Charle Kaufman’s “Adaptation.”
