Buzz Worthy News: April 11, 2016

Welcome to Buzz Worthy News where the stories are awesome and not at all well-written. Need your YA industry news? Never fear, Kate Copeseeley is here to give it to you straight.

In this week’s Buzz Worthy News: Cleopatra Adaptation Gets Writer, Freeform Adapts Cloak & Dagger, Goodreads Has 50 Million Reviews, and Toni Morrison Wins A Medal. All this and more!

Buzz Worthy News is Cuddlebuggery’s weekly news post bringing you all the best information about the book and blogging world, particularly for the venn diagram of people who overlap between the two.

The BFG Trailer

Oh guys, this looks so unbelievably cute! This is a total must see in our family, I can tell you.

Cleopatra Adaptation Gets a Writer

It looks like a writer has been found for the adaption of Cleopatra: A Life. If you recall, this is the movie spearheaded by Angelina Jolie that was famously discussed in the Sony email leak. Scott Rudin, the producer said of her:

“I’m not destroying my career over a minimally talented spoiled brat who thought nothing of shoving this off her plate for eighteen months so she could go direct a movie. I have no desire to be making a movie with her, or anybody, that she runs and that we don’t. She’s a camp event and a celebrity and that’s all and the last thing anybody needs is to make a giant bomb with her that any fool could see coming.”

This makes me feel bad for her, because we’ve heard how hard it is to make it as a female anything in Hollywood. Ah well. I digress A writer has been found!

David Scarpa has come aboard to rewrite Cleopatra, Sony Pictures’ epic project based on the Stacy Schiff bestselling book Cleopatra: A Life. The other elements are the same on this, with Angelina Jolie attached to play the title character and Scott Rudin and Amy Pascal producing it.

This one got close to the start line once with James Cameron ready to direct, before Fox kept him in the fold with a massive deal to helm his Avatar sequels. David Fincher has also circled the project. There’s no director committed at this point.

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The Boys Comes to TV

Fans of Garth Ennis will be happy to hear about this, in the wake of Preacher’s  success:

It seems like comic writer Garth Ennis is taking a liking to Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. The duo are in the midst of bringing his comic, Preacher, to AMC and now they’re hoping to bring another of his famous works, The Boys, to Cinemax.

Late last year, Birth Movies Death reported that Rogen and Goldberg were shopping the comic as a show, and now Deadline confirms Cinemax taken the bait and put the show into development. The Boys is about a special CIA group whose job is to keep a watchful, and forceful, eye on the superheroes of the world.

Anchorman and Big Short director Adam McKay had been developing The Boys as a film for quite a long time but that’s obviously now pivoted to TV, where a sprawling story like this simply is easier to adapt (think The Walking Dead). Because of the success of that show, darker, meatier comics like Preacher and Y The Last Man have made the jump to the small screen. Now The Boys joins the list.

These types of brutal comics aren’t my style, but I’m thrilled for the fans who are getting to see their longtime faves on the screen.

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Cloak & Dagger Adaption Comes to FreeForm

In case you forgot (like I do every freaking time I hear the name and have to look it up), FreeForm is the new name for what was previously ABC Family. Not content with snagging the uber-popular adaption to Cassie Claire’s Shadowhunter series, Freeform is now also eyeing the comic book market and the Marvel universe.

The younger-skewing Disney-owned network has greenlit “Marvel’s Cloak and Dagger” with a straight-to-series order, Variety has exclusively learned.

Described as a superhero love story, “Cloak and Dagger” is based on the titular comic book duo (also known as Tandy Bowen and Tyrone Johnson) who have appeared in Marvel Comics classics, including “Spiderman” and “X-Men” stories.

The live-action interracial romance follows the duo, two teenagers from very different backgrounds, who find themselves burdened and awakened to newly acquired superpowers while falling in love — Tandy can emit light daggers and Tyrone has the ability to engulf others in darkness. They quickly learn they are better together than apart, but their feelings for each other make their already complicated world even more challenging.

No writer has been attached to the series, but the search is currently under way. Marvel Television and ABC Signature Studios will co-produce.

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Special “Sensitivity” Readers To Provide Service to Authors

We have had many a Buzz story about the complexities of white(cis, male, etc) authors writing about other cultures and lgtba issues (even JK Rowling has been guilty of missteps) and now there is a service, via Write In the Margins:

A sensitivity reader reads through a manuscript for issues of representation and for instances of bias on the page.  The goal of a sensitivity reader isn’t to edit a manuscript clarity and logic, although that may be an additional service offered. A sensitivity reader reviews a manuscript for internalized bias and negatively charged language.  A sensitivity reader is there to help make sure you do not make a mistake, but they are also NOT a guarantee against making a mistake.

Sensitivity readers can help you identify problematic language and internalized bias on the page when writing outside of your experiences.  This is not a guarantee that others will not have issues with your work.  But it is a way to attempt to catch and correct high level issues prior to submission or publication.

Seems like this has the potential to be a valuable service.

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Goodreads Celebrates 50 Million Reviews

As a member since 2008 (omg, I just had my 8 year anniversary!), I was definitely interested to hear that Goodreads just celebrated their 50 millionth review! Holy cow!!! That’s a lot of readers and a lot of enthusiasm. I love it. In celebration of this achievement, they have posted a statement and a pretty cool infographic.

In retrospect, it should be no surprise that readers – the consummate lovers of words – would also be eager to write. Many of our reviewers have developed their own distinctive style and won an audience that loves their creativity as much as their recommendations. The amazing diversity of reactions and approaches is what makes Goodreads reviews so unique and enjoyable. And now, just over nine years later, we’ve reached a new milestone: 50 million reviews!

On behalf of the Goodreads team, I wanted to give a huge thank you to all of you who’ve written such amazing reviews over the years. I hope you’ve found it as rewarding as I do to look back at your reviews, months or even years later, and re-live each reading experience. We’re also proud of the fact that we’re helping readers all over the world build an online record of the books they’ve read and what they think of them. And I know I speak for book lovers everywhere when I say that your reviews help so many of us discover our next favorite book.

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Lena Dunham Launches Imprint

Well this is interesting news. Lena Dunham (writer, actress, filmmaker) and Jenni Konner (of HBO’s Girls fame) are set to form their own publishing imprint called Lenny in partnership with Random House.

The name of this new venture comes from the email newsletter and website that is produced by Dunham and Konner. The launch date has been scheduled for 2017.

Dunham explained that she feels “the Lenny voice lends itself to a diverse list of authors and we are so excited to work with Random House — they get our mission completely. Lenny books will aspire to push the ball forward on the issues that matter to our audience, with wit and style. We hope to see them sticking out of purses and riding public transportation everywhere.”

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Toni Morrison Wins a Medal

This week The MacDowell Colony named Toni Morrison the recipient of their 2016 Edward MacDowell Medal, which will be awarded to her on August 14th of this year.

This award recognizes artists who have made a significant contribution to the culture of the United States. Past recipients who produce literary works include Robert Frost, John Updike, and Joan Didion.

Michael Chabon, the chairman of the MacDowell Colony and a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, gave this statement in the press release: “Toni Morrison is indisputably the greatest living American novelist. With the prophetic vision that is the oldest, truest patrimony of American literature she sees us as we are now, as we have been and as we have never lived up to our promise to become. In the refiner’s fire of that vision she has shaped the raw, hard stuff of our singularly violent history—the factual and the mythic history alike—into epics of everyday tragedy, written in a prose style that like all the greatest American prose styles alloys the fiercely poetic and the wryly conversational to forge a language that shines with compassion and cuts like steel.”

Agreed, McDowell people, agreed.

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Interesting Links

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