David Yates To Direct 'Your Voice In My Head'

Harry Potter director David Yates may be taking a break from big movies. After helming the last four Potter films, he has been courted for other huge projects such as The Stand, the Alan Turing movie The Imitation Game and a Doctor Who film he'll reportedly make with the BBC, possibly starting next year.

Before anything else, however, it looks like he'll direct a film based on the Emma Forrest memoir Your Voice in My Head, which Forrest wrote as a way of coping with her own bipolar disorder and the two relationships that paralleled her most difficult days with the condition.

Variety says that Forrest wrote the script based on her own book, and that if things go well the film would shoot next summer. Ruby Films, the London-based company that is putting together the film, is trying to get Yates' favorite studio, Warner Bros., to finance the film.

Yates told Variety,

It's a small film, hard hitting and with elements of magic realism. Compared to 'Potter' it would cost tuppency ha'penny, and for that reason it would be incredibly liberating to make.

No question that this would be very different from the Potter films. With far less money on the line, and far less public scrutiny of the project, I can imagine that making Your Voice would feel like an entirely new game, even with the heavy subject matter. Here's the description of the book:

Emma Forrest, a British journalist, was just twenty-two and living the fast life in New York City when she realized that her quirks had gone beyond eccentricity. In a cycle of loneliness, damaging relationships, and destructive behavior, she found herself in the chair of a slim, balding, and effortlessly optimistic psychiatrist—a man whose wisdom and humanity would wrench her from the dangerous tide after she tried to end her life. She was on the brink of drowning, but she was still working, still exploring, still writing, and she had also fallen deeply in love. One day, when Emma called to make an appointment with her psychiatrist, she found no one there. He had died, shockingly, at the age of fifty-three, leaving behind a young family. Reeling from the premature death of a man who had become her anchor after she turned up on his doorstep, she was adrift. And when her all-consuming romantic relationship also fell apart, Emma was forced to cling to the page for survival and regain her footing on her own terms. A modern-day fairy tale, Your Voice in My Head is a stunning memoir, clear-eyed and shot through with wit. In her unique voice, Emma Forrest explores the highs and lows of love and the heartbreak of loss.