Another day, another still-unpublished book has been picked up for adaptation to the big screen, with the news that teen novel **The Lonely Hearts Club **has been picked up by Manderlay for a film outing. Despite that Abbey Road-invoking cover, our sources say that Sgt. Pepper is not involved.
No, in fact Elizabeth Eulberg's book tells the story of a high-school girl who decides that her male contemporaries are total jerks and swears off dating until graduation. When lots of her female classmates join her, it throws the school into turmoil.
It's an interesting set-up, and Eulberg knows the teen market as she's been working in publicity for publisher Little Brown for years, notably on the Twilight series with Stephenie Meyers. The cynic in us might assume that this is another book promoting the value of abstinence to teenage girls (does anyone ever put the same effort into promoting it for boys?) but hopefully we're wrong on that and this will be a film more in the spirit of Mean Girls than some Lifetime movie called, say, Not In The Back Seat You Don't: The Jonas Brothers Story.
Peter Guber, Cathy Schulman and Scarlett Lacy of Manderlay will be producing. The book's out in January, so we'll get a better idea of the film at that point.