Augustine Frizzell To Direct Adaptation Of Fantasy Novel The Invisible Life Of Addie LaRue

Multi-hyphenate filmmaker Augustine Frizzell has lined up her next project. According to Variety, she'll direct "The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue," which is based on the best-selling fantasy novel from author V.E. Schwab that was published last year. Frizzell has previously made movies like 2018's raunchy, female-centric "Never Goin' Back" and 2021's weepy romantic drama "The Last Letter From Your Lover," and she also directed the pilot of HBO's "Euphoria" a couple of years ago. This project sounds a little more high-concept than anything she's tackled before, but she's already proven to have a somewhat malleable directorial style that can shift based on the requirements of the story she's telling, so I look forward to seeing what her approach will be to this material.

Here's the official description of the novel:

France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.

Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore, and he remembers her name.

A deal with the devil, a centuries-spanning adventure, and a hidden bookstore, all in the same movie? Count me in.

Schwab, who was originally going to write the screenplay herself, once said that her original inspiration for the book "came from 'Peter Pan,' actually, and thinking about how sad it is to forget and how much sadder it would be to be forgotten." That's a strange coincidence, because one of this movie's new co-writers has a different Peter Pan connection: David Lowery ("The Green Knight," "A Ghost Story"), who is married to Frizzell, is co-writing and directing Disney's upcoming "Peter Pan and Wendy" movie. The new report says Frizzell and Lowery will be writing the "Addie LaRue" screenplay together, and Schwab will stay on board the project as a producer.

The book sold over a million copies in its first year and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for an impressive 42 weeks. eOne acquired the film rights last year, and here's a fun piece of trivia about this story: Gerard Butler will also be a producer on the movie. Yes, that Gerard Butler. The "Den of Thieves" actor's production company, G-Base, has teamed up with eOne to produce this film, so he's among the producers who are helping to bring this film to life. This will be only the third movie G-Base has produced in its existence which doesn't involve Butler as an actor.