Amy Adams’ Ten Best Days

Amy Adams is turning producer on her next project. The breakout star of Junebug, who’s since gone on to bowl us over in Julie and Julia, Enchanted and Doubt, is clearly fan enough of Adena Halpern’s novel My Ten Best Days that she wants to oversee its journey to the screen. That or she knows a starring role when she sees one.

The novel is set in the afterlife: specifically Heaven, which is structured into seven levels, of which the seventh is the most desirable (meaning you can eat what you like and never get fat). Main character Alex wants to stay there with her Uncle Morris and her grandparents, in a perfect house that never needs cleaning, but is in danger of being demoted unless she can provide evidence of having lived a worthwhile life. Hence her homework essay on her ten best days.

Now, we’re slightly bummed to learn that Heaven a) has a hierarchy, b) involves homework and exams, and c) means you have to live in the same house as your relatives. There are also echoes of What Dreams May Come and The Lovely Bones, but this will clearly be far more lightweight than either, and on that level could be fun. Heaven portrayed as a kind of Tim Burton 1950s suburbia, for example, could give this the slightly spiky edges it’ll need to avoid just being twee.

Josh Klausner, who used to direct second unit for the Farrelly Brothers before turning to writing (he’s been working on Shrek Forever After) is writing the script, and Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum) is tipped to direct. Hopefully that’s a team that knows how to aim for the funny and hold back on the cloying.
Owen Williams

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