"Light Between Oceans" award-winning novel finds helmer

PanARMENIAN.Net - Derek Cianfrance, who last directed the Ryan Gosling drama The Place Beyond the Pines, has been hired to direct DreamWorks’ adaptation of The Light Between Oceans.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Heyday Films' David Heyman -- who is behind one of the fall’s most buzzed about movies, Gravity -- and Jeffrey Clifford are producing the movie based on M.L. Stedman’s novel.

The book, published July 2012 by Scribner to stellar reviews, is set on an island off the coast of Western Australia after World War I.

"A captivating, beautiful, and stunningly accomplished debut novel that opens in 1918 Australia - the story of a lighthouse keeper and his wife who make one devastating choice that forever changes two worlds.

Australia, 1926. After four harrowing years fighting on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns home to take a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day's journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby's cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom's judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

M. L. Stedman's mesmerizing, beautifully written debut novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel's decision to keep this "gift from God." And we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another's tragic loss," a review of the book says.

The Light Between Oceans won the 2012 GoodReads Choice Award for Best Historical Fiction and also landed on the long list as nominee for the Women’s Prize for Fiction this year.

Rosie Alison, who brought the book to Heyday, will executive produce.

“With his previous work, Derek has exhibited a deft touch when handling complex and emotional subject matters,” said DreamWorks production president Holly Bario in making the announcement. “With Derek on board to direct, we know the project couldn’t be in more capable hands.”

Cianfrance wrote and directed 2010’s Blue Valentine, which starred Gosling and Michelle Williams and garnered many award nominations. He reteamed with Gosling for Pines, which also starred Bradley Cooper and Eva Mendes.