'Tree of Life' Production Company Bringing Karen Thompson Walker's 'The Age of Miracles' to Film

River Road Entertainment — the production company behind Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life — has optioned The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker's debut novel about a California girl growing up while the planet's rotation mysteriously slows. Days stretch, gravity shifts, crops fail; middle school continues regardless.

The book was the subject of a legendary auction — a reported seven-figure advance for a first novel written before work in the mornings — and the film rights moved almost as fast. The pairing makes sense on paper: Walker's novel shares Malick-land's fascination with cosmic scale refracted through ordinary lives.

Walker has said the novel began with a single image: a mother stockpiling canned food while her daughter worries about a boy. The apocalypse as weather — background to adolescence, which proceeds on schedule.

Update: a decade on, the film has not materialized — a reminder that an option is a lottery ticket, not a green light. The novel, which needs no adaptation to be worth your time, is cataloged here; we'll update the page the moment cameras roll.