Reese Witherspoon options SJ Watson mystery thriller Second Life
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Version 0 of 1. Reese Witherspoon’s production company, Pacific Standard, will adapt SJ Watson’s new thriller novel, Second Life, about internet sex, for the big screen. The English author’s recently published book, the follow-up to literary sensation Before I Go to Sleep, centres on a woman named Julia Plummer who dives headlong into an online world of vice as she vies to uncover the truth about her sister’s murder. Certain that she will find the killer by surfing the dating sites where her sibling spent so much of her time, Plummer soon finds herself dangerously wrapped up in the alternate online persona she has created. Related: Reese Witherspoon to play US soldier killed in Afghanistan It is not clear whether Witherspoon will take the lead role in the film adaptation. The Oscar-winner has starred in two previous Pacific Standard productions, this year’s awards season contender, Wild, and the action-comedy Hot Pursuit. But she walked away from another, Gone Girl (taking a producer’s role), after director David Fincher preferred Rosamund Pike for the female lead. Before I Go to Sleep was also made into a film last year, with Nicole Kidman, Mark Strong, Colin Firth and Anne-Marie Duff starring. However, Rowan Joffe’s memory-loss-themed mystery thriller failed to mirror the huge success of its source novel, taking just $15m worldwide on the back of mixed reviews. Pacific Standard was formed by Witherspoon and Bruna Papandrea in 2012 to help overturn what the pair saw as an unhealthy lack of movies featuring strong female protagonists. The company recently teamed up with 20th Century Fox offshoot Fox 2000 to option Gayle Lemmon’s book Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield. The 38-year-old star of Walk the Line and Legally Blonde also appears keen to take the lead role of pioneering US Army 1st Lieutenant Ashley White, an elite woman soldier who died in Afghanistan in 2010. |