Actress on the rise Elle Fanning has signed on to star in Olive’s Ocean, an adaptation of the 2003 novel by Kevin Henkes, according to Deadline. A 2004 Newbury Award winner, Olive’s Ocean follows a Wisconsin teenager named Martha (to be played by Fanning) who spends the summer with her Grandmother (named Godbee) on the Atlantic Ocean. Before her latest trip she is given a journal entry written by her classmate Olive, who has recently passed away and secretly hoped to be friends with Martha.
Olive is taken aback by this, and after discovering they both shared a love of the ocean, she decides to capture a jar full of the Atlantic to give to Olive’s mother upon her return to Wisconsin. In addition to her mission, Martha also deals with burgeoning young romance and grows even closer to Godbee. Christina Hammonds Reed has been given screenwriting duties; this will be her first feature film script (she was recently a Nicholl Fellowship finalist, which sounds cool even though that might as well be Greek to me). No director has been named as of yet, but a budget of 11 million dollars has been agreed upon so I would assume it’ll either be someone cheap or new.
At its surface, Olive’s Ocean seems like sugar-coated pablum and a movie that I would literally punch a nun (again) to avoid, but it does seem like a movie that could hit with the young female demographic in a major way. But this is seriously not for me, in any way whatsoever, so I’m going to end it on that note before I run out of things to say.
Is the Olive’s Ocean novel a lot better than the plot outline makes it sound? Will it be a movie that females will latch onto, or will it get lost in the dust?