Movie News: The Forest of Hands and Teeth

On the heels of The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins) and If I Stay (Gayle Forman) movie adaptation, comes news today that the rights of Carrie Ryan's The Forest of Hands and Teeth have been purchased. 2009 has been a great year for YA writers with many of the films being rushed into production. Even every YA reader's favourite nerd, John Green, is working on the screenplay for Paper Towns. It's an epidemic, a good one!

Publisher's Weekly says this:

Alan Nevins of Renaissance Literary & Talent has just closed film rights on Carrie Ryan's YA novel, The Forest of Hands and Teeth. Nevins, who brokered the deal on behalf of Jim McCarthy at Dystel Literary, sold the book, which Delacorte Books for Young Readers published in March, to Seven Star Pictures (K-11, forthcoming). Nevins said the book, a zombie thriller set in colonial times about a girl who lives in a religious community in the woods and is equally worried about a zombie invasion and her planned marriage, is in line to "do for zombies what Twilight did for vampires." Supposedly Seven Star is developing the project for an-as-yet-unnamed A-list starlet, and fast-tracking the project with a first draft of the screenplay already in the works.

And you can find Carrie's reaction here.

I do take issue with the continuing Twilight references - If I Stay and The Forest of Hands and Teeth are nothing like Twilight with an exception to them 1) all having pages 2) all being YA and 3) people die. OMG they are totally alike!!

Regardless, I would love to take this opportunity to congratulate Carrie on this deal. I think we all knew it had filmatic appeal and now we are going to see Mary (and the Unconsecrated) become a reality. Is it just me, or are you more scared about seeing the Sisterhood come alive?