Unanimous Entertainment to produce adaptation of Women’s Prize for Fiction (formally The Orange prize) winner MAY WE BE FORGIVEN by A.M. Homes.
Chris Coen’s Unanimous Entertainment has secured the rights to MAY WE BE FORGIVEN by A.M. Homes. Originally published to widespread acclaim by Viking in the U.S. and Granta Books in England this past October, the book recently won the high-profile Women’s Prize for Fiction inLondon. Rights to the novel have been sold in eleven other countries to date.
Set in suburban America, MAY WE BE FORGIVEN masterfully dissects and deftly portrays the minutiae of dysfunctional American family life. Thrilling and darkly comic, the story has all the trappings of an American classic. The chair of this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction award, Miranda Richardson, described the book as “a dazzling, original, viscerally funny black comedy – a subversion of the American dream.” In his blurb for the book, Salman Rushdie said “This novel starts at maximum force -- and then it really gets going. I can't remember when I last read a novel of such narrative intensity; an unflinching account of a catastrophic, violent, black-comic, transformative year in the history of one broken American family. Flat-out amazing.” In the Los Angeles Times, Carolyn Kellogg commented “Homes crams a tremendous amount of ambition into May We Be Forgiven, with its dark humor, its careening plot, its sex-strewn suburb and a massive cast of memorable characters...its riskiest content, however, is something different: sentiment. This is a Tin Man story, in which the zoned-out Harry slowly grows a heart.”
Unanimous is currently talking to writers and filmmakers and plans to announce a significant creative team behind the project shortly. Development is being co-funded by Unanimous Entertainment.
‘I am very excited and honoured to be producing this incredible project. The book so deserved to win the Women’s Prize for Fiction prize here in London. It has remained with me ever since I read it a few months ago. A.M. Homes is an extraordinary writer and has captured something very special in MAY WE BE FORGIVEN’.
- Chris Coen
“I'm excited about the prospect of bringing MAY WE BE FORGIVEN to the screen as I am a writer who thinks in images and scenes. And all the more thrilled to have Chris as a producer as I admire the films he's made. “
- A.M. Homes
Katie Goodson-Thomas brought the book to Coen’s attention and will be taking a producer credit on the film. Chris Coen recently announced a new project with James Marsh writing and directing, which will shoot next Summer, and his latest project, JANE GOT A GUN is due to wrap shortly. Unanimous continues to develop and finance a full slate of feature films and plans to announce a new production fund in 2014.
A.M. Homes is the author of the memoir The Mistress’s Daughter and the novels This Book Will Change Your Life, Music for Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as the story collections The Safety of Objects and Things YouShould Know and the travel book Los Angeles: People, Places, and the Castle on the Hill. Her books have been translated into twenty-two languages. The recipient of numerous awards, she has published fiction and essays in The New Yorker, Granta, Harpers, McSweeney’s, One Story, The New York Times and Vanity Fair, where she is a Contributing Editor. She lives in New York City and teaches at PrincetonUniversity.