Nicholas Sparks’ novels have had without a doubt had tremendous success both in terms of book sales and the box office takings of their film adaptations. His latest novel to be turned into a film is The Lucky One, published back in 2008, and it certainly looks like it is set to continue what is a brilliant trend for the novelist, whose film adaptations to date include Message in a Bottle, Nights in Rodanthe, Dear John, and of course, the incredibly popular The Notebook, which gave a huge boost to the careers of its leading stars, Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling.
Yahoo Movies have now got a brilliant first look at the film with a poster and a great featurette in which Sparks talks about the story of the film along with some its leading cast, which includes Zac Efron (17 Again), relative newcomer Taylor Schilling (Ben Affleck’s upcoming Argo), Blythe Danner (Meet the Parents), and Jay R. Ferguson (The Killer Inside Me).
Taken from Waterstones’ description of the novel,
“Is there really such a thing as a good luck charm? Ex-soldier Logan Thibault thinks he just might have found one. Haunted by memories of the friends he lost in Iraq, Logan knows how fortunate he is to be home. He believes that a photograph he carried with him, a picture of a smiling woman he’s never met, kept him safe. Even though he knows nothing about this woman, he hopes she might hold the key to his destiny. Resolving to find her, Logan embarks on a journey of startling discovery. Beth, the woman whose picture he holds, is struggling with problems of her own: her volatile ex-husband won’t accept their relationship is over and threatens anyone who gets too close to her. And, despite a growing attraction between them, Logan has kept one explosive secret from Beth: how he came across her photograph in the first place…”
The featurette gives us our first look at clips from the film spliced between the interviews with Sparks and the cast, and it looks brilliant. Say what you will about Efron’s early rise to fame through High School Musical, I think he’s becoming a terrific young actor, and just like Kristen Stewart is shaking off her Twilight stereotype and taking more diverse and unexpected parts, Efron looks to be going for roles to demonstrate what a great actor he is, and this looks to be a terrific demonstration of that.
The music of the video also happens to be excellent, closing with One Republic’s great single, Secrets, with its wonderfully feel-good/inspirational chorus. Despite Schilling being relatively new to the industry, she looks brilliant in this opposite Efron, and I really can’t wait for this to hit the big screen.
Directed by twice Oscar-nominated director Scott Hicks (Shine), and with a script from Will Fetters (Remember Me), The Lucky One is due to be released here in the UK on 4th May next year, and I think they can definitely already count on my ticket money, along with many, many others’. Without further ado, here’s the excellent featurette, followed by the film’s first poster.
