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In his first film since the hit Sideways nearly five years ago, Alexander Payne is set to adapt The Descendants, the debut novel from Kaui Hart Hemmings.

Variety reports:

Set in Hawaii, "Descendants" tells the story of a wealthy landowner who takes his two daughters on a search for his wife's lover in the hopes of keeping his family together.

Publishers Weekly calls the novel "frequently hilarious and intermittently heartbreaking," and The New Yorker dubs it "[an] audaciously comic début."

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Robert Kirkman's comic series The Walking Dead is lumbering toward the small screen, according to the Hollywood Reporter:

Frank Darabont is on board to write, direct and exec produce the project, with Gale Anne Hurd of Valhalla Pictures and David Alpert of Circle of Confusion also executive producing.

"Walking Dead," a monthly black-and-white comic book, has been a hotly sought-after property since it was published in 2003

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Perhaps only a filmmaker as distinctive as David Cronenberg could bring Don DeLillo to the screen.

Then again, perhaps no one can.

We may soon find out, as the director of Crash (based on the J. G. Ballard novel) and Eastern Promises embarks on an adaptation of DeLillo's Cosmopolis.

Cronenberg will helm and also adapt the 2003 novel for the screen. Story follows a 28-year-old multimillionaire on a 24-hour odyssey across Manhattan. Considered one of America's leading novelists, DeLillo's most acclaimed works include "White Noise" and "Underworld."

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There may be a new version of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH headed to screens if Paramount Pictures has its ...

Two controversial figures in entertainment are joining forces to adapt I Am Number Four, "the first of a six-book science fiction deal," that will be produced by Michael Bay, the auteur of movies about giant robots blowing stuff up real big.

According to Variety:

The real surprise in the deal...is the identity of one of the two authors. Though WME began shopping the book Thursday under a pseudonym, sources said one of the writers is James Frey, best known for writing A Million Little Pieces. Neither the agency nor the studio would confirm.

(Read the Powells.com interview with James Frey.)

If the rumor is true, it would be ironic, considering that most things in a Michael Bay film get blown into a million little pieces. ("A million little pieces" could also describe the editing style, as Bay's films contain, on average, one million cuts per second.)

Bay, whose Transformers 2: Revenge of Blowed-up Stuff just opened to ...

Fresh from his Oscar-nominated turn in No Country for Old Men and Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Javier Bardem is in talks to join Julia Roberts and Richard Jenkins in the cast of Eat, Pray, Love, based on — you guessed it — the bestselling book by Elizabeth Gilbert.

From Variety:

Roberts plays the author, and Bardem will play Felipe, the man Gilbert meets and falls in love with on the final leg of a journey of self-discovery that began with the end of her marriage.

Richard Jenkins plays a Texan whom the heroine befriends at an Indian ashram.

The film is being adapted by Ryan Murphy, who created the TV series Nip/Tuck and FOX's forthcoming Glee (and previously helmed the film version of Augusten Burroughs's memoir Running with Scissors that nobody much liked).

So, what do ...

Joseph Finder's novel Killer Instinct is getting picked up for film.

Novel concerns a sales exec at an electronics giant in Boston who struggles to find the killer instinct that it takes to navigate the corporate world.

[...] "The book appealed to us on two levels: as a terrific thriller and also as a parody of the technology industry that is scary and funny at the same time," Steve Schwartz said.

The San Francisco Chronicle praised: "This is fun stuff, with lots of plot twists. Finder once again proves adept at genre conventions and inventive in applying an action-movie sensibility."

If they want casting suggestions, I nominate Steve Carell. He's got the chops for it.

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It was bound to happen eventually. Universal Studios is going to turn Where's Waldo? into a movie.

According to Variety:

Written and illustrated by Martin Handford, the "Waldo" books have

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Since Warner Bros. is splitting Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows into two parts, this summer's film version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince won't quite be the penultimate chapter of the hugely successful series when it hits theaters on July 17th.

(View the trailer here.)

Thus, Hollywood has bought itself a little time to find a successor to the Harry Potter juggernaut — but not much.

In the Los Angeles Times, Rachel Abramowitz (co-author of Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?: The Truth about Female Power in Hollywood) takes a look at the upcoming contenders for the title.

The leading candidate appears to be Tintin.

Sony and Paramount are jointly producing "The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn," a 3-D film directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson. The $200-million production is set to be one of

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Kirk Ellis, who recently oversaw the award-winning HBO miniseries John Adams (based on the David McCullough biography), will follow that project with adaptations of James Ellroy's American Tabloid (possibly as an HBO series) and Hampton Sides's Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West.

And after that, perhaps in the next century sometime, he's adapting A. E. Hotchner's book Papa Hemingway.

Hotchner's memoir about the last 14 years of Hemingway's life focuses on the literary giant's close friendship with Hotchner. The author just recently agreed to sell the film rights to the highly personal memoir.

The only other film I can think of from a Hotchner book is Steven Soderbergh's terrific, underrated third feature, King of the Hill — not to be confused with the animated series.

However, I was surprised to ...

Is it possible that fans of Stephen King and epic fantasy can hear anything better than the news that King's Dark Tower series may finally be coming to film?

How about this: it just might be overseen by the director of the new Star Trek film and one of the head writers of Lost.

"Damon Lindelof and I talked to Mr. King," [J. J.] Abrams told IGN while promoting the upcoming "Star Trek" film. "We got the rights for ['Dark Tower'] as a film. Damon is obviously still on 'Lost' and we've been working on 'Star Trek' together. As soon as 'Lost' is done, hopefully we'll begin tackling that."

Hey, you've got a little drool next to your mouth, there. Nothing to be embarrassed about. Go ahead and dab, I won't make fun.

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In case you're wondering just what sort of film will be made from Malcolm Gladwell's non-fiction bestseller Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, here comes news that Al Pacino may be signed to star.

Traffic screenwriter Stephen Gaghan, who turned Robert Baer's similarly non-linear (and non-fiction) See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism into Syriana, is handling the adaptation.

Gaghan's script will center on the relationship between an older man (Pacino) and the twentysomething son he was never close to. The two reconnect early on in the pic, and the boy, an idealistic drifter who's teaching in a downtown New York school, and the father, a finance type living in Connecticut, must navigate their new relationship.

Oh yes, the book. Well, the son has that Blink thing going — he can size up people and situations on a dime. The Pacino character spots this, and both wants to help the boy find himself and use him to make some dough on Wall Street. It's "Scent of a Woman" with a finance-y twist — colorful, self-involved older guy mentoring younger ingenue for reasons both selfless and selfish.

What do you think, readers? Utilizing Gladwell's own theory to blink at this concept, are you going to miss the film? Or get an eyeful?

Jed Rubenfeld's thriller The Interpretation of Murder is headed to the big screen via Warner Bros.

Story follows a Sigmund Freud protege who discovers a trail of sadistic murders in turn-of-the-century New York.

[...] Deal marks the first studio project for Holmes, who co-wroe, helmed and was exec producer of "House of Saddam," a dissection of the ruthless reign of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The mini aired on HBO in the U.S.

In a starred review, Booklist hailed: "Rubenfeld renders rich, complex characters, vivid period detail, and prose riddled with heady references to Hamlet."

On the other hand, Esquire predicted, "It might make a fine movie someday, but as a book it will leave readers cold." Guess we'll find out.

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Fresh from the hit X-Men Origins: Wolverine, plans are already underway to give Deadpool, "the wise-cracking mercenary played in the film by Ryan Reynolds," his own spin-off.

Deadpool is known as "the merc with a mouth," a character that under

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Warner Bros. has picked up the film rights for Norman Ollestad's Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival, due in stores next month.

Ollestad's memoir recounts how his father infused his love for extreme sports in him as a boy, pressing him to become a competitive surfer and skier, experience that allowed him to survive when a plane crash stranded him on an icy mountaintop at age 11.

Publishers Weekly proclaims, "Ollestad's unyielding concentration on the themes of courage, love and endurance seep into every character portrait, every scene, making this book an inspiring, fascinating read."

Don't miss Ollestad's reading at Powell's City of Books on Wednesday, June 17th!

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David Slade — who's set to direct the third Twilight film, Eclipse, after helming the (most likely much bloodier) film version of the graphic novel 30 Days of Night — gets to take a break ...