Focus on Netherland

My Oscar sense is tingling. Focus Features is partnering with Oprah’s Harpo Productions and Sam Mendes’ Neal Street to adapt NETHERLAND, a book by Joseph O’Neill that Harpo optioned last year. The script is set to be written by Christopher Hampton, who was nominated for an Oscar for his ATONEMENT screenplay, and Mendes is considering directing.

So what’s the story on the source material?

“Netherland” won O’Neill the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The novel is set in New York City, where a lonely Dutch expatriate becomes drawn to the sport of cricket and forms an unlikely bond to immigrant culture.

Having just moved from New York, I can’t really say I witnessed too many cricket games, but maybe where I lived on Wall Street wasn’t the best locale for the sport. I did see some wicked intense games of frisbee in Central Park though.

No word on a timetable for NETHERLAND, but I would expect it to drop during Oscar season in 2010.