Author John Green has already made big, blubbering puddles out of both his readership and the movie-going world, thanks to last summer’s big screen adaptation of his wildly popular The Fault In Our Stars. Later this summer, fans can take in something considerably lighter when Paper Towns, yet another feature adapted from a popular Green novel, hits theaters. Still, even with this veritable cornucopia of Green-created features hitting the multiplex, fans of Green’s work have long hoped to see his first novel, 2005’s Looking For Alaska, get its own movie treatment. Wait no longer, Greenies (that’s a thing, right?).
Variety reports that the long-in-development Looking For Alaska movie is very much happening, and even has a director to prove it. Green himself took to Twitter last night to announce the news that Electrick Children director Rebecca Thomas has snagged the gig:
Big announcement! The Looking for Alaska movie has its director, the brilliant Becca Thomas (@beccalouthomas). IT IS REALLY HAPPENING.
— John Green (@johngreen) June 25, 2015 Like both The Fault In Our Stars and Paper Towns, Looking For Alaska is a YA novel that, though sweet sounding, is underpinned with some big-time issues. The book follows Miles “Pudge” Halter, an awkward teen obsessed with famous last words (kids are so weird), as he makes the decision to finish out his high school career at Culver Creek Preparatory High School, a boarding school located in far-off Alabama (fine, Pudge is from Florida, but that’s still a hell of a change). At Culver Creek, Pudge makes all kinds of wacky new friends, but none is nearly as intriguing as the beautiful Alaska Young, who captures Pudge’s heart with ease, even as she appears to be struggling with the very mechanics of life.
Um, don’t read the book’s Wikipedia page. Don’t.
Paramount has owned the rights to the film since 2005 and, previously, Josh Schwartz was set to direct the feature for the studio. Screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber—who previously adapted The Fault In Our Stars for Green—have penned the script. Thomas wrote and directed Electrick Children, a Julia Garner-starring drama that garnered (tee hee) plenty of big buzz when it hit the festival circuit in 2012.