Australian writer-director Emma-Kate Croghan will direct an adaptation of Debra Adelaide’s international bestselling novel The Household Guide to Dying according to Deadline Hollywood, with actors Minnie Driver (Good Will Hunting) and Patrick Dempsey (Grey’s Anatomy) said to be in talks to star.
Australian writer Debra Adelaide’s 2008 novel The Household Guide to Dying, was the author’s third novel and twelfth book. Originally published by Picador it was an immediate hit, published in countries including the US, China, Brazil and Israel and garnering more than $1 million in rights sales at the time. The novel is narrated by Delia, a witty advice columnist, wife and mother, who confronts her own cancer by trying to write the ultimate guide to ‘dying well’.
The Household Guide to Dying
The synopsis: ‘Acerbic household influencer Delia Bennett decides to write “The Book” on how to die well. When things don’t go according to plan, she is forced to consider that dying well is not as simple as laundry. Delia embarks on a road trip with her daughters to come to terms with her past and help her family face the future.’
The film will be produced by Australian producers Leesa Kahn (Come Away) and Catriona Hughes (Kokoda: 39th Battalion) of GFN Productions, as well as UK producer James Spring (Finding Your Feet) of Fred Films.
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Emma-Kate Croghan burst onto the scene in 1996 when she was just 24, with her critical and audience hit debut, the youthful romantic comedy Love and Other Catastrophes, starring Frances O’Connor, Alice Garner and Radha Mitchell.
Cast by the media at the time an enfant terrible, Croghan followed up in 1999 with Strange Planet starring Naomi Watts, Hugo Weaving and Claudia Karvan. She then moved to Hollywood to work on a film adaptation of Philip K Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, but the project didn’t eventuate. There has been a long gap in her filmography though according to HLA Management she has four other feature films in development.
Croghan confirmed the news about The Household Guide to Dying on Instagram, though said the Deadline article had some ‘odd inaccuracies’.
British American actress Minnie Driver, who will presumably play the central role of Delia in the film, has recently been seen as Queen Elizabeth in the TV series The Serpent Queen and in the David Ayer action film The Beekeeper. Dempsey recently starred in Michael Mann’s Ferrari, Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving and is in production on a Paramount series, Dexter: Original Sin.
According to Deadline, Ellen Wander of Film Bridge International is selling The Household Guide to Dying at this week’s American Film Market in Las Vegas.
