Georges Méliès borrowed liberally from Jules Verne and H.G. Wells for Le Voyage dans la Lune in 1902, which means the film industry began raiding libraries almost as soon as it learned to point a camera. The habit shows no sign of exhausting itself, and this autumn arrives with an unusually rich haul, running from a Steinbeck epic to a fake-dating romance set in a chemistry lab. Consider the following your reading schedule.
September and October, Witches and Chemists
The season opens on September 11 with Practical Magic 2, adapted from Alice Hoffman‘s sequel novel The Book of Magic, which brings Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock back to the Owens sisters alongside Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing. Joey King, Maisie Williams and Lee Pace join as newcomers, and anyone who spent the late Nineties attempting midnight margaritas will need no further encouragement.
Ali Hazelwood‘s The Love Hypothesis follows on September 23 via Prime Video, with Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman handling the fake relationship that begins with an impulsive kiss in a laboratory corridor. The novel began life as fan fiction and became the defining campus romance of its moment, so expectations run high.
October belongs to John Steinbeck. East of Eden arrives on Netflix on October 1 as a seven-episode limited series adapted by Zoe Kazan, whose grandfather Elia Kazan filmed the same novel in 1955 with James Dean. Florence Pugh plays Cathy Ames and also produces, with Christopher Abbott, Mike Faist, Ruth Wilson and Ciarán Hinds filling out the Trask family saga.
November, Governesses and Games
Victorian Psycho opens on November 13, adapted by Virginia Feito from her own novel and starring Maika Monroe as a governess whose employers take rather too long to notice the pattern. It premiered at Cannes in May and has been dividing audiences pleasurably ever since.
A week later, on November 20, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping returns to Panem for Suzanne Collins‘s prequel about a young Haymitch Abernathy entering the fiftieth Games. Elle Fanning, Ralph Fiennes, Glenn Close and Jesse Plemons lead a cast assembled with obvious relish.
The month closes with Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, Greta Gerwig‘s adaptation of C.S. Lewis, arriving in theaters on November 26 before landing on Netflix on Christmas Day. Gerwig chose the origin story rather than the wardrobe, which tells you something about her ambitions for the series. Six adaptations in eleven weeks amounts to a considerable amount of homework. The sensible approach involves choosing two, reading them properly, and arriving at the cinema insufferably well informed.
