Deadline reports that Legion showrunner Noah Hawley has signed on to direct an adaptation of Matthew Baker‘s short story To Be Read Backwards for Fox. The book is “a mind-bending take on a man who begins his life at his death and learns about himself as he, and the world, unravel in reverse, ultimately revealing humanity and mystery”.
For Hawley, who loves telling stories in a non-linear fashion, this sounds like the perfect project to adapt. He’s already got one exciting film ready to go for 2019 – Pale Blue Dot starring Natalie Portman as an astronaut newly-returned from space – while he’s also hard at work trying to get his Doctor Doom movie off the ground.
As for Baker, the writer of the story, he’s had a superb year. He has sold the rights to four of his short stories to four different production companies. Netflix won a bidding war for Life Sentence which has Matt Reeves on board as a producer, Amazon nabbed Transition, and The Appearance was picked up by Makeready, the independent studio backed by Universal Pictures.
Hawley is also currently writing the third season of Legion, so he’s going to be hard at work for a while, it seems. After Pale Blue Dot, who knows what project of his will arrive first?
He previously stated that the upcoming Disney-Fox merger hasn’t stalled the plans for the Doctor Doom movie, but it seems more likely that To Be Read Backwards – with probably a far smaller budget – could have a better chance of being made first.
#Peace.Love.ToBeReadBackwards
