The Hollywood Reporter has the exclusive:
Tate Taylor, currently riding high off the critical and financial success of The Help, is in early talks to direct Peace Like a River, an adaptation of a Leif Enger novel that would see DreamWorks team up with Warner Bros. to bring it to the screen.
Brad Pitt and Plan B are producing with David Brown and Kit Golden.
The 2002 novel is narrated by an asthmatic 11-year-old named Reuben Land, who lives with his eccentric family in 1962 Minnesota. When two young troublemakers break into the family home, Reuben’s 16-year-old brother guns them down and is convicted in the ensuing trial. When the brother escapes, Reuben, his sister and his widowed father criss-cross the Midwest to find him.
The book, which won an award for best adult novel for teens as well an Independent Publisher Book Award, dealt with themes of forgiveness and miracles.
Warner and Plan B have long been working on adapting the novel. Back in the mid-2000s, the studio commissioned a screenplay by Kathy McWorter, and in 2005 it even had Billy Bob Thornton attached to star as the father. But a director who could juggle a tough-to-sell period setting and a large cast eluded them.
