Book Appointment Now
Eleanor Oliphant is getting the silver screen treatment
For a novel shaped by chronic loneliness, “Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine” moves with surprising buoyancy. Eleanor’s voice is so out of step with the world that her observations lend the story an accidental wit. Reese Witherspoon recognized this balance right away. “Great Book Alert!! Beautifully written and INCREDIBLY funny,” she said in her review of the book.
Readers responded in kind. Securing its place as one of Reese’s best literary fiction picks, the novel won the Costa First Novel Award. What’s more, since its 2017 release, it has collected over 600,000 5-star reviews on Goodreads (with an average almost high enough to top the highest-rated Reese’s Book Club pick of all time).
“Eleanor Oliphant” is also poised to join a growing roster of picks from Reese’s Book Club that made it to the screen. Witherspoon has built a media brand around her book club, which now serves as a strategic pipeline for her production company, Hello Sunshine. She acquired adaptation rights soon after the novel’s publication, with MGM later signing on as a partner. So much of the story lives inside Eleanor’s peculiar, emotionally blinkered narration. But Hello Sunshine has made a speciality of translating intimate, female-driven novels into commercially successful screen stories. This one is unlikely to be an exception.
