MUMBAI: DreamWorks Studios co-chairman and CEO Stacey Snider has revealed that it is in exclusive talks to acquire the feature film rights to M.L. Stedman‘s debut novel "The Light Between Oceans".
Heyday Films‘ David Heyman (Harry Potter series, Gravity) will produce the film adaptation along with Jeffrey Clifford. Rosie Alison, who brought the book into Heyday, will be the executive producer.
The film is based on a remote Australian island in the years following World War I, where a lighthouse keeper and his wife are faced with a moral dilemma when a boat washes ashore with a dead man and a two-month-old infant. When they decide to raise the child as their own, the consequences of their choice are devastating.
"M.L. Stedman has crafted a visually stunning and emotionally harrowing love story with a confounding moral dilemma at its center," said Stacey Snider in the media. "We were completely transfixed by the story and instantly imagined it as a sweeping, classic film. David Heyman is an ideal partner to bring Stedman‘s story to the screen," he added.
"I was deeply affected by M. L. Stedman‘s powerful and primal story of human choices and their consequences," said Heyman. "It‘s a novel which tackles grand emotions, but everything is rooted within an intimate yet universal story of marital and parental love. I am excited to be working with such sympathetic partners in Stacey and the team at DreamWorks."
‘I‘m both thrilled and incredibly honored that filmmakers of the caliber of DreamWorks and David Heyman are combining their brilliance in plans to bring the book to the big screen," said Stedman.
‘The Light Between Oceans‘ was published in the United States in July 2012 by Scribner and has appeared on both the New York Times and USA Today‘s bestseller lists, and others internationally, as well as being selected as Amazon‘s Best Book of the Month for August. It is due to be translated into nearly 30 languages.
Negotiations are being handled by Nick Marston of Curtis Brown in association with Sue Armstrong of Conville and Walsh.