Brooklyn director John Crowley is nearing a deal to follow-up his Oscar-nominated drama with an adaptation of Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel The Goldfinch.
For Crowley, the Warner Bros film would mark his highest-profile project to date. Before making Brooklyn, which netted three Oscar nominations, including best picture and best actress for Saoirse Ronan, the Irish film-maker was best known for helming the small-scale dramas Intermission and Boy A. The latter won Crowley the Bafta for best director in 2007.
The Goldfinch centers on Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker who survives a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that kills his mother and leaves him in the unlikely possession of a Dutch masterwork called The Goldfinch. After being abandoned by his alcoholic and gambling-addicted father, he’s taken in by a wealthy friend’s family on the Upper East Side, while being drawn into the art underworld because of the painting. The dense 775-page novel spans two decades in Decker’s life.
The screenplay for the adaptation has already been completed by Peter Straughan (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Our Brand is Crisis), according to Deadline. No cast has yet been announced.
Before he makes The Goldfinch, Crowley is directing Cate Blanchett in her Broadway debut early next year. She is due to star in The Present, a imagining of Anton Chekhov’s first play, known as Platonov. Crowley is a seasoned Broadway director, previous projects including A Behanding in Spokane, A Steady Rain and The Pillowman.
