Millie Bobby Brown, despite recently leaving the biopic “Perfect” for the streamer, is still very much in the Netflix business. Tom Hooper, director of the Oscar-winning “The King’s Speech” and “Les Misérables,” is set to helm an adaptation of “Nineteen Steps” (based on a bestselling novel she wrote with Kathleen McGurl), which is set to star Brown.
Anthony McCarten, who wrote “Bohemian Rhapsody,” is set to adapt the screenplay for the film. Millie Bobby Brown, Jake Bongiovi and Bobby Brown are producing for PCMA alongside Jonathan Eirich for Rideback, with Nick Reynolds executive produce=ing for Rideback.
The original novel, released in 2023 and warmly reviewed by critics, is set during World War II and is based on the experiences of Bobby Brown’s grandmother. “It’s 1942, and air raid sirens continue to wail around London. Eighteen-year-old Nellie Morris counts every day lucky that she emerges from the underground shelters unharmed, her loving family still surrounding her,” the official synopsis reads. The tagline on the book says, “Love blooms in the darkest days.”
Hooper hasn’t directed a movie since 2019’s disastrous adaptation of “Cats,” a financial and critical boondoggle that starred James Corden, Judi Dench, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellan and Idris Elba. Before that, he had directed “The King’s Speech,” which won four Oscars, including taking home the Best Picture and Best Director awards in the same year that “The Social Network” was nominated. His subsequent, pre-“Cats” films “Les Misérables” and “The Danish Girl” also won Oscars. He also directed the HBO miniseries “Elizabeth I” and “John Adams” and the HBO movie “Longford,” along with episodes of HBO and the BBC’s “His Dark Materials.”
Last year Hooper was attached to “Photograph 51,” with Natalie Portman set to play Rosalind Franklin, the groundbreaking British scientist who first unveiled the hidden structure of DNA and Anna Ziegler writing the script, which is based on her play of the same name.
Bobby Brown just finished the fifth and final season of her ultra-popular Netflix series “Stranger Things” and has “Enola Holmes 3,” the latest installment in the franchise, and romantic comedy “Just Picture It,” on the way (both for Netflix).
