Author Gillian Flynn is the Queen of Book Clubs thanks to her three nail-biting crime novels Gone Girl, Dark Places and Sharp Objects. And with two of these getting A-lister fronted movie adaptations, she's on the verge of becoming a major force in Hollywood. THR reports the recently wrapped Dark Places is lining up international buyers at the American Film Market. This should come as little surprise as Flynn's books have been bestselling must-reads, and the film--as you can see from the first look image above--stars Academy Award-winner Charlize Theron.
Theron fronts Dark Places as Libby Day, a woman who holds deep emotional and physical scars from a harrowing childhood trauma. When she was just seven years old, her mother and two sisters were murdered in their home. Only she and her fifteen-year-old brother Ben survived. Suspicion naturally fell to her brother, who was a loner with a bad reputation. Libby, who'd lost some of her fingers and toes in making her escape, testified against her brother, who for twenty-five years has been locked away and out of touch.
Libby would let sleeping dogs lie if it weren't for a desperate need for cash that urges her to investigate her own past to appease a hobbyist group of investigators who call themselves The Kill Club, who believe Ben was falsely convicted. With their significant support, Libby digs back into her past and tries to understand who her mother was, what her brother was going through, and how these fragile bonds led to a murder so heinous it was called "The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas."
Sterling Jerins, who appeared in two hits this summer The Conjuring and World War Z, will play little Libby. Mud's Tye Sheridan will tackle the role teenaged Ben, while Chloe Grace Moretz will play his gal pal Diondra. Christina Hendricks is on board as Ben and Libby's ill-fated mother Patty Day, and Warm Bodies's Nicholas Hoult will co-star with Theron as Kill Club treasurer Lyle. Gilles Paquet-Brenner, who helmed the 2010 drama Sarah's Key, wrote and directed the feature that isn't anticipated to hit theaters until September 1st, 2014. Why the long wait? Perhaps this twisted crime thriller hopes to hit some major festivals to build buzz ahead of its theatrical debut. For now, the only people who are getting a peek at the film's footage are those interested buyers at AFM.
Meanwhile, Gone Girl, by far Flynn's best-known novel, will be transformed into a chilling movie by David Fincher. Now in production, this Flynn film stars Ben Affleck as Nick Dunne, a writer whose life becomes stranger than fiction when his seemingly perfect wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) goes missing on the wedding anniversary. As the police investigate, the truth about their troubled marriage comes out and begins to turn public opinion against Nick. Neil Patrick Harris, Patrick Fugit, Tyler Perry, Kim Dickens, and Carrie Coon co-star. Gone Girl will hit theaters on October 3rd, 2014.
