Few names are on the tips of more Hollywood execs’ tongues right now than John Green, the bestselling author behind The Fault in Our Stars. After that tearjerking novel became a cross-platform hit, landing atop bestseller charts and birthing a film adaptation that exploded at the box office, attention turned swiftly to Green’s other books. Now, Temple Hill Entertainment has recruited Fault screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber to pen the adaptation of Looking for Alaska, with Fault producers Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen producing.
The teen romance centers on Miles, who attends boarding school for his junior year of high school, only to fall for a mysterious student named Alaska. The full synopsis for the novel is as follows:
Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then. . . .
After. Nothing is ever the same.
News of Neustadter and Weber coming into the fray follows a report last summer that Sarah Polley (Stories We Tell) was being tapped to adapt and possibly direct. Looks like that fell through. Luckily, Looking for Alaska is certainly in good hands. In addition to The Fault in Our Stars, Neustadter, Weber, Godfrey and Bowen are the same team behind forthcoming Green adaptation Paper Towns. Surely we’ll be hearing their names in relation to adaptations of An Abundance of Katherines and Will Grayson, Will Grayson soon enough.
