There’s a reunion brewing between the Weinstein Company and “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby” filmmaker Ned Benson, who the studio has hired to rewrite the script for “How Starbucks Saved My Life,” TheWrap has learned.
Michael Gates Gill’s bestselling memoir follows an advertising executive who loses his job and family, leaving him no other options but to take a job at Starbucks, where he befriends a young manager and learns about life and love.
Benson is not attached to direct at this point, though he could always take the reins down the line. In the meantime, he’ll be working off a recent draft from “Chocolat” scribe Robert Nelson Jacobs, who in July 2013, because the first writer hired to adapt the book even though the project has been in development since 2006.
Polymorphic Pictures’ Polly Johnsen is producing with Christy Ezzell, while TWC execs Dylan Sellers and Julie Oh will oversee the project for the studio.
Benson’s “Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby” premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival as twin pictures titled “Him” and “Her” that told the same story from the different perspectives of leads James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain. Those separate films will hits theaters on Oct. 10, while a single narrative titled “Them” will open in limited release on Sept. 12.
TWC is planning an awards campaign for the ambitious movie, which co-stars Viola Davis, William Hurt and Bill Hader.
Last summer, Benson was hired to adapt Steve Martin’s book “Object of Beauty” for Maven Pictures’ Trudie Styler and Celine Rattray as well as Amy Adams, who is attached to star. The up-and-coming filmmaker previously adapted the novel “Charlotte Street” for Working Title.
Benson is represented by UTA, Wet Dog Entertainment and attorney Alan Grodin.