Just a few weeks after its release, Gillian Flynn’s third novel, Gone Girl, rose up the charts and now sits on both the New York Times and USA Today bestsellers lists. Ordinarily, that would be the good news we’re reporting, but thanks to a huge auction sale, it’s just part of Flynn’s success.
According to Deadline, the movie adaptation rights to Gone Girl hit the block earlier this week, and after some ferocious bidding, Pacific Standard won out. The specifics of the transaction are being kept under wraps, but sources say the bidding hit seven figures, which is a huge return for an author who hasn’t yet had a massive movie success.
Perhaps more exciting for fans, Reese Witherspoon has already emerged as one of the producers on the upcoming film. She’ll watch over things alongside Bruna Papandrea and Leslie Dixon, while Flynn adapts her own work. The author’s other two novels have been sold previously and are in the development stages, but without any footage, it’s still difficult to discern how they, or this, might translate to the big screen.
Gone Girl follows a traumatic relationship and a disappearance. After years of fighting, cheating and being combative, a woman goes missing in a small town, and the police look to her husband to find the answers. He denies any involvement, but after his mistakes come to light, authorities find it difficult to believe him. The novel, which has been getting great reviews, is written in the first person, alternating between man and wife; so, it’ll be interesting to see what form the adaptation takes.
