Currently on a bit of a roll having adapted the much-anticipated The Girl On The Train, screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson has found her next project, again based on a novel. She'll write the script for Maestra, fom the L.S. Hilton story that made waves at this year's London Book Fair.
Sony snapped up the rights to Maestra earlier this year, with Amy Pascal (Paul Feig's Ghostbusters, the new Spider-Man). The story - the first in a planned series - is a conspiracy thriller set in the European art world, with feisty protagonist Judith Rashleigh discovering fraud at her London auction house and ending up fleeing for her life while she follows the dirty money. Only "her consummate ability to fake it among the rich and famous" can save her.
The book is reportedly very racy, suggesting that Sony might be looking for some of that Fifty Shades action. That makes Wilson a reasonable fit, since she was previously best known for 2002's weridly erotic Secretary. She's since written Atom Egoyan's Chloe and did uncredited work on Chan-wook Park's Stoker. Her most recent gig before The Girl On The Train was Jason Reitman's Men, Women And Children.
Pascal, meanwhile, has also begun development on a film of The Girl In The Spider's Web with Scott Rudin, based on the recently published third sequel to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (written by David Lagercrantz, continuing from the trilogy by the late Stieg Larsson). Which is interesting in itself, since the originally projected sequels to the David Fincher version of Dragon Tattoo never happened. The most recent word on the street was that The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest might be combined into a single movie.
There are no dates in place for either project yet, but Maestra will be published in the UK by Zaffre at the start of next year.