Rodney Chester, in "The Courier-Mail", talks to Matthew Reilly who has had a few of his novels optioned by film studios. His second novel, Ice Station, certainly looked like getting made, until the executive who championed it left the studio.
Another one of his novels, Hover Car Racer, has a much better chance of getting made into a film, as Disney has purchased the movie rights outright, rather than taking out an option for a few years. "But again, now the screenplay -- not being written by me; it's being done by Al Gough and Miles Millar (Spider-Man 2, Shanghai Noon) -- has to fight all the battles, since it's the screenplay that will be shot," Reilly says.Wendy Orr's, Nim's Island, has already been made into a film and for the author it was a case of pure serendipity.
For Orr that serendipitous moment came when freelance film producer Paula Mazur contacted her in 2003. Mazur's seven-year-old son had borrowed the book from the local library and he, along with the rest of the family, were entranced by the tale of a girl who calls on the help of an author of adventure stories when her father goes missing. When the film, starring Abigail Breslin and Jodie Foster, was shot on the Gold Coast last year, Orr discovered Mazur wasn't the only fan. Foster loved the story because it had drawn in her reluctant-reader son. "Nim was the book that showed her son that he could love reading," Orr says. "That's the most powerful compliment you can pay an author."
