Liane Moriarty’s newest novel Here One Moment has already been earmarked for a screen adaptation through Bruna Papandrea and Steve Hutensky’s Made Up Stories and Nicole Kidman and Per Saari’s Blossom Films, less than two months after its release.
Fifth Season set up the series adaptation after securing the screen rights, bringing together the two companies for their fourth project based on a Moriarty novel, following Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers, and the upcoming Binge series The Last Anniversary.
The author’s tenth novel, published by Macmillan in Australia on August 29, takes place on a flight from Hobart to Sydney, during which ‘A lady’, unremarkable until she isn’t, predicts how and when many of the passengers are going to die. For some, death is far in the future; for others, it is very close.
In an interview with Crown Publishing Group, which launched Here One Moment in the US on September 10, Moriarty said the story came to her during a delay ahead of a flight from Hobart.
“It was a very long delay and I had no book to read,” she said.
“During that time, the cheerful thought came into my head that every passenger on this plane would one day die. I was looking around at everyone and all the other passengers thinking, ‘I wonder if you’ll be the person whose life is cut short? I wonder if you’ll be the person who lives until they are over 100?’
“It occurred to me that one day that information would be available . . . and I thought, ‘What if that information was available now?'”
In a joint statement, Made Up Stories and Blossom Films described Moriarty’s novel as a “complete triumph” that was “as thrilling as it is thought-provoking” and “as moving as it is funny”.
“Teaming up with Fifth Season to bring Here One Moment to the screen is a dream and we cannot wait for the world to experience the adaptation of this layered, emotionally complex story of love and fate,” they said.
Moriarty’s previous work includes Apples Never Fall, which Universal Studio Group adapted into a series, starring Sam Neill and Annette Bening, and The Husband’s Secret, to be the subject of a new feature from Sony starring Blake Lively.
Kidman told a crowd at last year’s SXSW Sydney that the author had become a “great friend”.
“She’s the same age, she’s got kids, and she’s gone through similar things at different times,” she said.
“I think we’re just simpatico, simpatica.”