Debut Novelist Erin Morgenstern's Night Circus Makes It to the Movies

January 9, 2011

What’s better than finding out your novel has been bought by a major publishing house? Finding out that novel will also become a movie. This is what happened to author Erin Morgenstern, whose book The Night Circus was picked up by Doubleday in September 2010. Now, Summit Entertainment has acquired world rights to the book and conversations about turning the story into a movie and possibly bringing it to television are underway. Erik Feig, director of production at Summit, said in a statement: “The Night Circus sets a spell on the reader from its very first page and we cannot wait to find the right filmmaker and cast to make the world come as inordinately alive as it does in the mind’s eye.” Summit is also the powerhouse behind Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga.

Morgenstern shares on her website that her head is still spinning, and of her craft, she says: “I write. Fantastical, fairy tale-esque things with magic and mystery and tea.” Which sounds like the heart of this book, about family, rivalry, and love. There are myriad other debut novels that also made it to film in a big way: Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada; Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago; Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones; Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, to name a few. Now, we’re thrilled to add Morgenstern’s book to the list of ones to watch.