One of Ray Bradbury’s most enduring books, Dandelion Wine is set for a film adaptation, Variety reports. Rodion Nahapetov, the writer, director and star of 2008’s Contamination, is attached to provide the screenplay.
A loosely connected series of short stories based on Bradbury’s childhood in 1928, Dandelion Wine was first published in novel form in 1957. The author’s official website offers the following official synopsis:
Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole wide world that lies beyond the city limits. It is a pair of brand-new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for Grandfather’s renowned intoxicant, the distant clang of the trolley’s bell on a hazy afternoon. It is yesteryear and tomorrow blended into an unforgettable always. But as young Douglas is about to discover, summer can be more than the repetition of established rituals whose mystical power holds time at bay. It can be a best friend moving away, a human time machine who can transport you back to the Civil War, or a sideshow automaton able to glimpse the bittersweet future.
Dandelion‘s publication fell between Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes, both of which have previously been adapted into features. The former has long since been planning a re-adaptation and the latter is, some argue, a loose sequel to Dandelion Wine, featuring a setting in the same fictional “Green Town.” A more direct sequel, Farewell Summer, was published in 2006.
