Kidman adapts Wolitzer's The Female Persuasion for film

Nicole Kidman is reportedly developing a film based on Meg Wolitzer’s new novel The Female Persuasion.

According to Entertainment Weekly, the actress and her company Blossom Films has partnered with “Interstellar” producer Lynda Obst on the adaptation with Kidman also due to star in it. The Female Persuasion was published in the US on 3rd April by Riverhead Books and is released in the UK on 7th June, by Chatto & Windus.

The adaptation would mark one of the biggest features that Kidman’s Blossom Films has produced to date, according to EW. Kidman’s most notable producing venture for "Big Little Lies" on TV, adapted from Liane Moriarty’s novel which scored Kidman two Emmys and various other awards. A second season is currently in production.

The Female Persuasion follows inhibited college student Greer Kadetsky who meets a woman who will shape her life. Hearing the charismatic Faith Frank speak for the first time, in a crowded campus chapel, Greer feels herself changed. She explores a new direction initiated by Faith, away from the future she had always imagined. 

Kidman had previously mentioned the project on Instagram. She wrote last week: “I didn’t need to be persuaded to join forces with two extraordinary women on adapting this brilliant and timely novel,” citing Obst and Wolitzer and posting the cover of the book.

Wolitzier is the author of several novels, her biggest seller being The Interestings (Vintage) about a group of friends who meet as teenagers one summer, which sold 11,123 copies in paperback. She told The Bookseller in 2013, ahead of its release, that the book was inspired by her experience in a summer camp in 1974.

In 2014 the New York-based author wrote in The Bookseller about the importance of reading and how  books are “are a solace, a poultice, a way to savour, to rest, to be alert, to get lost, to feel love, and to be profoundly alone while not remotely being isolate”. 

She has sold 32,024 copies of her books altogether for £238,194, according to Nielsen BookScan.