Strange books become best-sellers, and then the strangest best-sellers become movies. Take Only Love Is Real, for instance: It’s not the Only Lovers Left Alive novelization sequel we’ve been dreaming of, but a sort of pseudoscientific self-help book. The author, past-life-regression therapist Dr. Brian Weiss, made a revolutionary discovery when he noticed that two of his patients (referred to in the book as Pedro and Elizabeth) were “describing the same past lifetimes with a stunning similarity of detail and emotion.” Whereas most professionals would’ve written this off as mere coincidence, Dr. Weiss was a little too smart for that. As a psychological caregiver, he used his medical doctorate to determine that Pedro and Elizabeth’s souls had been intertwined for eons.
During her sessions with Dr. Weiss, Elizabeth was able to establish contact with the Ancients, described by Weiss as “highly evolved, ancient souls who, through [Elizabeth], channeled profound, crystalline messages for all people about life after death, spiritual dimensions, and the purpose of our lives on Earth.” Her tete-a-tetes with the Ancients opened Elizabeth’s mind to the truth, that she and Pedro have courted one another in past lives since the dawn of time itself. Or as Dr. Weiss’ official website (which I could not recommend more highly, really, it is a gold mine) puts it, “Could they have loved each other and lost each other across time? In the answer to that question lay a gripping drama of which none of them—neither psychiatrist nor his patients—was yet aware, a drama that would nevertheless begin to unfold in the unsuspecting serenity of the doctor’s office.”
So, yeah, that’s gonna be a movie. THR noted that the rights to Only Love Is Real now belong to Fox 2000, and that Michael Petroni, scriptwriter of 2013’s The Book Thief adaptation, will wrestle this tome into a shape befitting the silver screen. The THR post claims that scribe Petroni will use Dr. Weiss’ book as more of a “jumping-off point for a fictional and dramatic love story centering on past lives.” This all sounds a little sketchy, but remember, metaphysical romance could always be worse. Have we already forgotten Comet?