When it comes to second phases in entertainment careers, you really can’t go wrong with being a producer. Julia Roberts seems to have embraced that idea fully because she has just signed another deal with Reliance Big for her production company Red Om Films.
According to Variety, Roberts and co-producers Philip Rose and Lisa Gillan acquired the rights to a non-fiction book called In the Neighborhood by Peter Lovenheim which will be published next April.
The conceit of the book is that Lovenheim felt as if there wasn’t enough community spirit in his neighborhood of Brighton, New York after a family that lived down the street suffered a horrible tragedy. So, he decided to create one by spending a night in each of his neighbor’s homes and learning all about who they were as people.
An opinion article published in the New York Times gives a brief taste about what we’d be in for during the rest of the book and movie and so far, I agree with writer Michael Fleming’s assessment that it’s going to be “Capra-esque.”
This will mark the fifth deal that Roberts has with Reliance Big; here’s information about the other films-to-be:
My Mother the Cheerleader: Though it does have a terrible title, this novel by Robert Sharenow set in the 1960s is about a 13-year old girl whose worldview is challenged when a New York reporter comes to do a story on her mother who spends her mornings jeering at the first black girl in their community to go to an all-white school.
Jesus Henry Christ: Directed by Dennis Lee and expanded from his 18-minute short film of the same name, the film’s plot is now about a 10-year old test tube kid’s search for his biological father.
Mallory: Written by Matthew Faulk and Mark Skeet (Vanity Fair), this would be a biopic about British mountaineer George Mallory who attempted to climb Mt. Everest three times but died on his third attempt. His body was only recovered in 1999.
The Journey is the Destination: Based on the journals of photographer Dan Eldon who was killed by an angry mob while covering the story of a botched U.N. peacekeeping mission in Somalia, the movie will star Daniel Radcliffe and is slated to begin production in 2011.