Thea Sharrock, the filmmaker behind the hit romantic drama Me Before You, has been tapped to helm Lionsgate’s feature film adaptation of The Things We Leave Unfinished, the love story by Fourth Wing author Rebecca Yarros.
Todd Lieberman, who produced Lionsgate’s nearly $400 million worldwide smash hit The Housemaid, and the Lionsgate/Netflix sci-fi action hit War Machine, is producing via his banner Hidden Pictures.
The story tells of a woman who, after a devastating public big city divorce, returns home in the Rockies where she must reluctantly work with an arrogant bestselling author to finish her late great-grandmother’s WWII love story. In the process, the two uncover secrets of the past even as their undeniable attraction brings them closer together.
Arash Amel (A Private War, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare) adapted the novel for the big screen.
Yarros wrote several romance stories prior to becoming a big name author with her Fourth Wing fantasy books, Things We Leave Unfinished among them. Those novels have become hot commodities not just because of her name but also a resurgence of onscreen love stories.
The author is exec producing Things We Leave Unfinished through her production company Full Measures Productions. Also exec producing are Amel, through his shingle The Amel Company, along with Alex Young and Carly Kleinbart Elter of Hidden Pictures.
Lionsgate has found considerable success with adapting popular books. The Housemaid was based on the novel by Freida McFadden and it recently won a seven-studio bidding war for the adaptation rights to The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (Lieberman is also producing the latter). And the company has The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping set for release later this year.
“Thea has an incredible gift for emotional storytelling and is the perfect filmmaker to bring Rebecca Yarros’ sweeping, romantic, and heartbreaking story to the screen,” said Lionsgate Motion Picutre Group president Erin Westerman in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.
The project is being overseen by Scott O’Brien and Maria Ascanio at Lionsgate and Hidden Pictures’ Kleinbart Elter, who brought in the project.
Sharrock, who began her career as a theatre director in England, directed Ladies First, the gender-reversal comedy starring Sacha Baron Cohen and Rosamund Pike that debuted on Netflix last week. Her feature debut was the weepie Me Before You, which starred Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin and took in over $200 million worldwide.
As a theatre director, her production of After the Dance won the Olivier Award for best revival, and it was her acclaimed 2007 revival of Equus that marked Daniel Radcliffe’s Broadway debut.
Sharrock is repped by CAA.
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