This year’s Cannes Film Festival is officially a wrap, but folks are still talking about some of the annual fest’s biggest highlights and would-be deals between studios and filmmakers. In fact, one of the hottest tickets at Cannes this year is The Midnight Library, a fantasy drama starring Florence Pugh (Midsommar, Dune: Part Two, Black Widow), with Lion director Garth Davis at the helm. According to Deadline, Paramount, Focus, and Sony want the domestic and international distribution rights for the $70M movie, with producer-financier Studiocanal selling the movie. We should know where the film lands in a couple of days.
What is The Midnight Library about?
Based on the novel series by Matt Haig, The Midnight Library is a big-budget “love letter to life” project. Per the logline, Pugh will play “Nora Seed, who finds herself in a library between life and death with the chance to experience all the potential lives she could have lived.”
For a more detailed look at the plot, here’s a synopsis for the first novel, courtesy of Amazon:
When Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up until now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change.
The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things aren’t always what she imagined they’d be, and soon her choices place the library and herself in extreme danger.
Before time runs out, she must answer the ultimate question: what is the best way to live?
The Midnight Library is part of Haig’s “The Midnight World” book series, with The Midnight Library releasing in 2020, and The Midnight Train hitting shelves in 2026. I purchased The Midnight Library the second I learned about Pugh joining the production. I love her, and I love reading even more. I have a TBR pile a mile high. Right now, I’m reading Frances White’s The Bone Door. It’s a dark fantasy novel with elements of horror, found family, and misfit children.
Adapt The Bone Door
Here’s a synopsis for The Bone Door, if you’re interested:
When Hop awakens in an ancient labyrinth, he has no memory of his life or how he got here. He does not recognize the mysterious girl trapped with him. And he certainly cannot identify the shadowy figure stalking him, whispering terrible things…
But there is one thing he is certain of: He must escape.
The only way out of the labyrinth is through The Bone Door. But it lies behind a series of locked doors hidden across an array of strange realms. To open the way, Hop must complete impossible tasks before his time runs out. As Hop travels deeper into the maze, he discovers that he and his companions may be more connected to the place and its horrors than he could ever imagine. Unless Hop is able to unravel the true mystery of the labyrinth and his own role within it, the Bone Door and any hope of escape will be lost forever.
The Bone Door is a lot of fun, and surprisingly dark, so far. I’m about 350 pages into it, and hope to finish it this coming week. I would not be surprised if we see a film or television adaptation of it in the coming years.
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