I don't really understand the appeal of Nicholas Sparks' work. They all have practically the exact same structure - young couples loves each other, drifts apart, falls back in love - yet every time a movie adaptation of one of his books comes out audiences eat it up. Even his least successful film, A Walk To Remember, made $40 million-plus on a $12 million budget. They are the definition of low-risk, high reward, so it should come as no surprise that studios leap at the chance to produce one.
Deadline reports that Warner Bros. has just acquired The Best of Me, the new book by Sparks. While the novel isn't available yet, the deal was made when studio reps sat in a room with the author while he laid out the story. The plot revolves around high school sweethearts (shocker) who drift apart as they reach adulthood (really?) and then reunite when a funeral brings them both back home (wow). The Best of Me hits shelves this October.
What's kind of funny is that the three Nicholas Sparks movies that Warner Bros. has produced - Message in a Bottle, Nights in Rodanthe and the aforementioned Walk To Remember - are the three lowest grossing of the six Sparks adaptations. Then again, when it's this easy to make millions of dollars hand over fist there's no reason not to keeping plugging at it.
