Matt Haig

SunnyMarch and Studiocanal have acquired the film rights to How to Stop Time. Cumberbatch is attached to star and executive produce through SunnyMarch, along with Jamie Byng, CEO of Canongate.

How to Stop Time will be published on 6th July 2017. You can order it here. Here’s the blurb from the back cover:

‘I am old. That is the first thing to tell you. The thing you are least likely to believe. If you saw me you would probably think I was about forty, but you would be very wrong.’

Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he’s been alive for centuries. From Elizabethan England to Jazz Age Paris, from New York to the South Seas, Tom has seen a lot, and now craves an ordinary life.

Always changing his identity to stay alive, Tom has the perfect cover – working as a history teacher at a London comprehensive. Here he can teach the kids about wars and witch hunts as if he’d never witnessed them first-hand. He can try and tame the past that is fast catching up with him. The only thing Tom mustn’t do is fall in love.

How to Stop Time is a wild and bittersweet story about losing and finding yourself, about the certainty of change and about the lifetimes it can take to really learn how to live.

More info on the movie stuff is here.

Studio Canal and Blueprint Pictures have bought the screen rights to A Boy Called Christmas. The duo came out on top following strong interest from a number of parties to the film rights. Ol Parker, who wrote both instalments of the hit The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films, is writing the screen play!