Book Beat: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before Starts Filming

Welcome back to Book Beat! Alas, a theme for this week’s Beat has completely eluded me, but we still have some exciting moving picture and new book news regardless!

Lana Condor. Photography by Jason Merritt. Image courtesy of Getty Images.
Lana Condor. Photography by Jason Merritt. Image courtesy of Getty Images.

The first book-to-moving picture news is that YA romance novel To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han is set to be made into a movie and they already have their lead in Lana Condor! The film, which has started production in Vancouver, Canada, will also be directed by and written by women as well. As an Asian-American myself it will be nice to see an Asian lead in an American movie, but I would be amiss if I didn’t mention the fact that casting Condor, who is Vietnamese-American, as Korean-American character Laura Jean is still an act of ethnic erasure. Some have also pointed out that after playing Chinese-American Jubilation Lee in “X-Men: Apocalypse” Laura Jean will be the second role Condor has taken on that does not match up with her ethnicity. As YA author and Diverse Books co-founder Ellen Oh put it, however, the role is still a step forward for Asian-American representation.

Meanwhile, the popular YA series The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater has just been optioned by Universal Cable Productions as a television series for SyFy! I haven’t read the series but I’m excited if a little nervous; “Twilight” director Catherine Hardwicke will be serving as executive producer of the show and will direct the pilot episode. Fortunately, Stiefvater will also serve as executive producer. Fingers crossed it all goes well. Maybe George R. R. Martin’s involvement with the “Game of Thrones” television show has shown Hollywood that keeping the original creators involved with their projects is a smart move.

Speaking of George R. R. Martin, the author himself sought to assuage fans’ fears earlier this week and assure them that he is still working on Winds of Winter, the long-awaited next chapter in the A Song of Ice and Fire series upon which “Game of Thrones” is based. When will it come out? Hopefully in 2018 but Martin makes no promises. Looks like my prediction that Winds will be pushed back even more due to Martin’s other projects was correct; Martin also announced that Fire and Blood, a book detailing the Targaryen rule of Westeros, will be coming out sometime in late 2018 or early 2019. So on keep praying to both the old gods and the new…

Finally I was tickled to find that Brooklyn publisher Melville House, which started dogging White House press secretary Sean Spicer back in March, was ready with more snark upon Spicer’s recent “resignation” last Friday. Sometimes it’s the little things that get you through the week.

Advertisements
Stephanie Tran

Stephanie Tran

Queer, 20-something intersectional feminist, Vietnamese-American, and born fangirl. Writes about anything geeky and thinks about food too much. You can find Stephanie's Twitter rants at @YouAndYourEgo.

One thought on “Book Beat: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before Starts Filming

  1. Anyone else here a cishet nonwoman who read and enjoyed the heck out of All the Boys? No one? Okay, just me then.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Close
Menu
WP Twitter Auto Publish Powered By : XYZScripts.com