Yesterday the first trailer for Brian Percival‘s The Book Thief was released after Fox quietly moved the adaptation of Markus Zusak‘s best-selling, 550-page, World War II-era novel, smack dab into the middle of awards season with a November 15 release.
Percival is probably best known as one of the stable of “Downton Abbey” directors and the film stars Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush and two-time Oscar nominee Emily Watson with Sophie Nélisse (who starred in the Oscar-nominated Monsieur Lazhar) at the center of the story as the titular character, Liesel Meminger.
Taken at age 9 to live with a foster family in a German working-class neighborhood, Liesel arrives having just stolen her first book, “The Gravediggers Handbook”. Though she does not know how to read, her foster father uses it to lull her to sleep when she’s roused by regular nightmares about her younger brother’s death. Thus begins a lifelong love affair with books.
John Williams provides the score and two-time Oscar nominee Anna B. Sheppard created the costumes. The biggest question mark, which actually may be the one thing most easily scrutinized, is screenwriter Michael Petroni whose previous work is hardly noteworthy being The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the 2011 Anthony Hopkins exorcism dud The Rite and 2002’s Anne Rice adaptation Queen of the Damned.
Certainly Fox is playing it as an Oscar contender with that mid-November date, but I have to assume the bulk of their attention will rest on the shoulders of Ben Stiller‘s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and, depending on critical response, perhaps The Book Thief will play a role, though it certainly has more than a share of names to at least capture our attention.
If you missed the trailer yesterday I’ve included it below and if you’re interested in purchasing the book from which it’s based, [amazon asin=”0375842209″ text=”click here”].
