Mark Wahlberg and Saoirse Ronan as Jack Salmon and Susie Salmon
The Lovely Bones film adaptation doesn't hit theaters until December 11th, but fans of the best-selling book are already clamoring to see how director Peter Jackson has translated this highly emotional story from the page to the screen.
This behind-the-scenes featurette includes Peter Jackson and screenplay co-writer Philippa Boyens discussing what initially attracted them to Alice Sebold's novel, and brief snippets of Rachel Weisz (Abigail Salmon), Mark Wahlberg (Jack Salmon), Saoirse Ronan (Susie Salmon), Stanley Tucci (Mr. Harvey), and Michael Imperioli (Len Fenerman) talking about the story and its characters.
The amazing thing about The Lovely Bones book is that, while the center of the story is the brutal rape and murder of a young girl, it isn't the details of the crime or even the identity or pursuit of the criminal that drives readers through the tale: it's Ms. Sebold's masterful use of the tragic events to portray a unique parallel coming-of-age story -- Susie, as she comes to terms in Heaven with what has happened to her and what she has lost; and her family, as they learn to survive in the aftermath.
It will be interesting to see in December if Mr. Jackson has been able to straddle both the emotional and plot-driven parts of the story and can successfully combine the two into a film that pleases both the book's fans and casual movie-goers.
After seeing what he accomplished with The Lord of the Rings (in my opinion, one of the best book-to-movie adaptations of all time), I'm thinking he can.
Take a look at the recently released trailer for The Lovely Bones here.
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Comments
I loved this book so much and I almost fell over when I heard Peter Jackson of all people was directing. But he did do Heavenly Creatures so I think it might be quite good.
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