It looks like another Chuck Palahniuk novel is headed to the big screen, but this time the acclaimed author will be doing the adapting himself. According to Ain’t It Cool News, Palahniuk will co-write an adaptation of his 2002 novel Lullaby. This puts Palahniuk in a new club of authors-turned-screenwriters, as he joins scribes like Gillian Flynn and J.K. Rowling, who adapted their respective works Gone Girl and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them for the silver screen.
An adaptation of Lullaby has been in the works for a few years now, and once had a director named Rolf Johansson attached. The last we heard about that particular attempt was six years ago though, so it’s safe to assume that that particular project has been dropped in favor of this new direction.
Lullaby may just be my favorite novel of Palahniuk’s, so I’m excited to hear that it’s getting adapted. This will be the author’s first screenplay credit, but if anyone is fit to adapt the book for the screen, it’s him. As far as the rest of his works go, Fight Club and Choke are the only two books to have been given a Hollywood makeover, though that’s going to change soon enough. Adaptations of Invisible Monsters, Snuff, Haunted, and Rant are all in various stages of development.
Here’s the Lullaby synopsis from Palahniuk’s website:
Journalist Carl Streator just lost his wife and only child. They both dropped dead after he read them what he thought was a simply beautiful lullaby. Turns out it was a little more.
The culling song—an African chant from a story book entitled Poems and Rhymes from Around the World—is a song that kills anyone it is read to. Stressed out due to his double loss, Streator starts to see people drop dead in front of his eyes. Turns out all he has to do is think about the culling song and he can kill anyone he directs that thought to.
Instead of using this new found ability to his advantage—admit it, you’d play around with it a bit—he sets out to find and destroy every copy of this book. He meets Helen Hoover Boyle, her assistant Mona, and Mona’s boyfriend, Oyster. Helen has experienced the destruction of the culling song and joins Streator’s crusade. On the way around the country, Streator discovers the existence of the grimoire, a spell book that contains the culling song. Now they must find and destroy that as well.
Streator has a tough time not killing everyone who pisses him off while trying to keep the culling song out of the wrong hands—most hands, actually.
Sounds like a pure horror/sci-fi novel. But it’s weird and funny and is still a Palahniuk novel that will have non-Palahniuk people lifting an eyebrow in confusion when you tell them what you’re reading.
Tell us, are you excited to hear that Lullaby is getting a film adaptation? Or are you holding out hope that another one of Chuck Palahniuk’s novels will hit the big screen? Let us know in the comments section below.
