We all know Joe Wright’s upcoming film “The Soloist,” written by Susannah Grant, was taken from the articles of Steve Lopez a few years ago. In the film, Robert Downey Jr. will play the LA Times columnist while Jamie Foxx will star as Nathaniel Ayers, the homeless Julliard-trained musician who became the subject of Lopez’s writings.
In most cases, as we learned twice over last year, screenplays based upon magazine or newspaper articles have a tough road to adapted screenplay consideration, given the general lack of narrative structure and the tendency to stray from the material presented in the actual articles. With that in mind, I figured “The Soloist” would be headed for original screenplay consideration in the fall. BUT…
I came across this today. It seems Steve Lopez will be reading from his new book “The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship and the Redemptive Power of Music” in Pasadena on Friday. The book actually releases tomorrow in bookstores nationwide.
So…now I wonder. The screenplay was obviously registered before the book was published, which puts it in the realm of original work, but these things can be tricky. And perhaps the book is simply a conglomeration of Lopez’s articles, in which case, nothing to see here. But we’ll have to keep our eye on it for now.