Movie Monday: Oscar winning actress teams up with James Patterson for a new legal thriller novel

I love a good book. Even better when a great book gets turned into a really good movie. It doesn’t always happen. Usually the book is always so much better than the movie but I can think of a few that really did it well:

Water For Elephants. Gone Girl. The Shawshank Redemption. The Green Mile. Big Little Lies.

Those all started out as novel and along the way someone said- hey, this would make a really good movie/show.

I bet it happens again with Judge Stone.

Even better when you have an Oscar winning actress teaming up with the legend that he is, author James Patterson. Book readers know of him well. He’s one of my favorites- short chapters, great characters, moving plots, suspense around ever turn. In fact, you’ve probably watched a show or a movie based on one of his hundreds of books and didn’t even know it.

Kiss The Girls. Along Came A Spider. The Women’s Murder Club. Alex Cross.

James Patterson just shared his exciting new partnership with actress Viola Davis for his next upcoming collaboration novel. On instagram he wrote: “Not since TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD has there been a novel quite like this one.”

In an interview with CBS news, Viola Davis described how easy he was to work with: “Meeting, writing this book, I just liked him. We just connected.”

And it was important for her to find the right writer: “I felt a responsibility to women who have been sexually assaulted and raped, especially children, as I am one of them,” she said. “And what they also deserve is the truth of how it made them feel.”

Judge Stone centers on a respected black female circuit judge in a small Alabama town who finds herself presiding over an explosive case involving a teenage girl who is raped and later undergoes an illegal abortion. Like many of Patterson’s books, the subject matter is explosive and provocative and he says that was exactly the point.

So when will that get turned into a movie? I guess the legal thriller book needs to come out first. It does so today and I’m sure the movie will be soon to follow. I’ll keep you posted!

What’s your favorite book turned into a movie or show? Email anytime: Laura.McKenna@civicmedia.us
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