Watching for... THE GREAT DIVORCE

For Pacific Theatre's next season, I hoped to stage The Silver Chair, but because a film version is in the works, the rights weren't available. But we did secure permission to produce The Great Divorce. Maybe we were just in time...

painting by Neil Dassler, from his "Great Divorce" series

Producers wed for 'Divorce' fantasy
Mpower, Beloved to adapt C.S. Lewis novel
By DAVE MCNARY
Variety, June 22 2010

Mpower Pictures ("The Stoning of Soraya M.") and Beloved Pictures are teaming to co-produce C.S. Lewis' fantasy novel "The Great Divorce." Veteran producer and Mpower CEO Steve McEveety will lead the production team. Childrens' book author N.D. Wilson ("Leepike Ridge," "100 Cupboards") is attached to write.

Lewis, who wrote the "Chronicles of Narnia" books and often wove Christian themes into his works, published "The Great Divorce" in 1945. Story centers on a man who learns that the sprawling, dim metropolis where he's been living is actually Hell; he hops on a bus headed for the outskirts of Elsewhere, only to discover that the one place worse than Hell, for a self-absorbed ad executive, just might be Heaven.

Mpower was created by McEveety in 2007 after he'd been a longtime exec at Mel Gibson's Icon Prods. He produced "The Passion of the Christ" and "We Were Soldiers" and exec produced "Braveheart" and "What Women Want." . . . Mpower recently completed the live action family film "Snowmen," which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and stars Ray Liotta and Christopher Lloyd. Other projects include romantic comedy "Hello, I Love You" by director Sunu Gonera ("Pride"); a film based on Adam Ciralsky's article "Scandal Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier, Spy"; Joe Eszterhas' "Guadalupe"; and "Left to Tell" by Immaculee Ilibagiza.

Thanks, Mr Chattaway