Fox Searchlight Buys ‘Silver Linings’ Author Matthew Quick Novel ‘Sorta Like A Rock Star’

EXCLUSIVE: Fox Searchlight has acquired screen rights to Sorta Like A Rock Star, the 2010 novel by Matthew Quick, who wrote Silver Linings Playbook. The film will be produced by Temple Hill’s Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen and Gotham Group’s Lee Stollman and Ellen Goldsmith-Vein.

None of Quick’s novels are easy adaptations (it took David O Russell’s understanding of bipolar subject matter to turn Silver Linings into an Oscar-nominated film), but just about all of his work is getting bought up. In Sorta Like A Rock Star, the protagonist is Amber Appleton, a high school senior who secretly lives in the back of a school bus, a situation that arose when her mother’s boyfriend kicked them out. The bus (they call it Hello Yellow) is the same one that her mother uses to drive kids to school, and despite the adversity, Amber is a self-proclaimed princess of hope and girl of unyielding optimism. A fatal tragedy puts her optimism to the test. The deal comes with a script that Laura Sandler and Amanda Harlib wrote on spec, but it’s likely the studio will seek out a director to guide how the project takes shape.

Gotham and Temple Hill teamed up on the project after they together adapted the James Dashner novel The Maze Runner in a Wes Ball-directed film that Fox will release next February. Resolution’s Rich Green brokered the deal for lit agent Doug Stewart and the scribes are repped by Gersh and Mosaic.