EXCLUSIVE: Stars Collective has optioned the movie rights to Fortune Sons: The 120 Chinese language Boys Who Got here to America, Went to Faculty, and Revolutionized an Historic Civilization, the critically acclaimed work of non-fiction from Liel Leibovitz and Matthew Miller.
The corporate plans to develop, absolutely finance and produce a characteristic adaptation alongside Academy Award winner Donna Gigliotti (Silver Linings Playbook, Hidden Figures). Yilong Liu will adapt the screenplay for the historic drama, with Stars Collective founder Peter Luo and Gigliotti to supervise your entire growth and manufacturing course of.
Revealed by W.W. Norton & Firm in 2012, the e book takes readers again to the twilight of the nineteenth century, when China — ravaged by poverty, inhabitants progress, and aggressive European armies — despatched 120 younger males to America to study the secrets and techniques of Western innovation. Chosen by the Qing Dynasty, the boys attended a few of New England’s most interesting colleges, together with Yale College, and had been pushed by a need for progress and reform. Their lives in America influenced not solely their pondering but in addition their nation’s endeavor to turn out to be a up to date world energy. When anti-Chinese language fervor compelled them again house, the younger males needed to overcome a suspicious imperial courtroom and a rustic deeply resistant to vary in expertise and tradition.
Lucky Sons chronicles this extraordinary journey, weaving collectively the dramas of the boys’ private lives with the story of a nation’s endeavor to turn out to be a world energy. Explains Gigliotti, “The historic significance of the boys’ mission is instructed by way of their private tales that included assembly Mark Twain and Ulysses S. Grant, visiting the World’s Honest of 1876 and studying to excel on the sport of baseball.” Many of those boys went on to turn out to be influential figures in China’s modernization efforts, shaping the nation’s path towards turning into a up to date world energy.
In an announcement on the undertaking, Stars Collective Co-CEO Nancy Xu stated, “‘Lucky Sons’ is a poignant story that hits totally different in 2024 and makes for a compelling and introspective cinematic piece. Yilong Liu is a tremendous author whose tailored screenplay will match the ability of the literary work that impressed so many and vaulted the e book to finest vendor standing.”
Added Stars Collective’s founder, Luo, of the collaboration with Gigliotti, “Donna is among the most interesting producers on this planet and a very good associate for Stars Collective. We’re thrilled to have a undertaking we will work on collectively. The tone, fashion, and impression of this story require producers with inventive experience associated to this materials, and Donna possesses that instinctual excellence. All of us see ‘Lucky Sons’ as a narrative that resonates globally and can make a film true to the supply materials.”
A Lila Acheson Wallace American playwriting fellow at The Juilliard Faculty, Liu’s play The E book of Mountains and Seas obtained the Lambda Literary Award for Drama, whereas his play Good Enemy had its premiere off-Broadway at Minetta Lane Theatre as a part of Audible Theater’s 2022-2023 season.
Certainly one of solely 9 ladies to win an Academy Award for Greatest Image, Gigliotti received for Shakespeare in Love in 1999, subsequently scoring noms for her work on The Reader, Silver Linings Playbook, and Hidden Figures. Most lately producing Paramount’s 80 for Brady, her different credit embrace Beasts of No Nation, Let Me In, Self-importance Honest and Emma, to call just some.
Gigliotti and Stars Collective have an ongoing relationship courting again to 2021 when she joined the corporate’s advisory fee, serving as a inventive mentor for rising filmmakers supported by its creators’ program. By way of this program, filmmakers are afforded the chance to develop content material with the steerage of such business luminaries as Sam Raimi, Jon M. Chu, Lu Chuan, Gianni Nunnari, Chris Lee, Paula Wagner, Patrick Wachsberger, and Eric Heumann, together with Gigliotti.
Based in 2020, Stars Collective’s enterprise mannequin hinges on pairing globally famend administrators and producers for joint unique IP growth. To this point, the corporate has produced Justin Chon’s Sundance drama Jamojaya and Neon’s upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s brief story The Monkey from Longlegs helmer Oz Perkins. Persevering with its push into literary diversifications with the Lucky Sons deal, Stars Collective most lately optioned movie and TV rights to the chart-topping ghost story Leigh Howard and the Ghosts of Simmons – Pierce Manor from USA In the present day bestselling writer Shawn M. Warner.
