'The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon': 'You Were Never Really Here' Director Lynne Ramsay Helming Stephen King Adaptation
Lynne Ramsay is getting in on the Stephen King adaptation action. The You Were Never Really Here director has signed on to direct Village Roadshow's adaptation of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Stephen King's 1999 novel about a little girl who gets lost in the woods. Christy Hall, co-creator of the Netflix seres I'm Not Okay With This, wrote the script with Ramsay.THR is reporting that Lynne Ramsay will direct The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. A potential film adaptation of the Stephen King novel has been knocking around for a while now, and for a long time, legendary horror filmmaker George A. Romero was attached to write and direct the movie. But Romero died before the project ever got off the ground. However, Romero's former wife Christine Romero is still attached as a producer on this latest incarnation of the adaptation. Other producers include It producer Roy Lee of Vertigo Films, Ryan Silbert of Origin Story, and Jon Berg through Stampede Ventures.
One of King's slimmer books – it's only 224 pages, which is the equivalent of a short story for King – the story follows nine-year-old Trisha McFarland, who gets lost in the Maine woods and begins to believe she's being stalked by some sort of supernatural monster. Or maybe it's just a bear. Here's a synopsis:
On a six-mile hike on the Maine-New Hampshire branch of the Appalachian Trail, nine-year-old Trisha McFarland quickly tires of the constant bickering between her older brother, Pete, and her recently divorced mother. But when she wanders off by herself, and then tries to catch up by attempting a shortcut, she becomes lost in a wilderness maze full of peril and terror. As night falls, Trisha has only her ingenuity as a defense against the elements, and only her courage and faith to withstand her mounting fears. For solace she tunes her Walkman to broadcasts of Boston Red Sox baseball games and follows the gritty performances of her hero, relief pitcher Tom Gordon. And when her radio's reception begins to fade, Trisha imagines that Tom Gordon is with her – protecting her from an all-too-real enemy who has left a trail of slaughtered animals and mangled trees in the dense, dark woods...
The book is very internalized – Trisha is pretty much the only character and the majority of the book is inside her racing, increasingly incoherent thoughts as she becomes more and more lost. That may not sound inherently cinematic, but Ramsay is quite skilled at taking that sort of material and working it into something incredible. You Were Never Really Here was a very internalized type of story and ended up being one of the best films of 2018. The idea of someone like Ramsay lending her talents to this material is exciting and could make for one of the better King adaptations.