Sam Raimi, the director behind the Tobey Maguire-starring Spider-Man trilogy, is gearing up to direct Love May Fail for Sony, Deadline reports. The project is an adaptation of a Matthew Quick novel. Quick is known for Silver Linings Playbook, which went on to major success after David O. Russell adapted it for the screen in 2012. The script for Love May Fail is being penned by Mike White (creator of HBO’s Enlightened).
While Raimi is know as the creative mind behind fantasy/horror movies like the original Evil Dead franchise, Darkman, the aforementioned Spider-Man trilogy, and last year’s Oz the Great and Powerful, he has strayed from that oft-relied upon genre before. In 1999 the directed the Kevin Costner baseball drama For Love of the Game.
For Raimi, the source material – along with the involvement of quirky writer Mike White – indicates that he will be veering towards a comedic/dramatic route. Love May Fail details a woman returning to her childhood Jersey home after a failed marriage to a philandering pornographer. There she finds herself determined to restore the reputation of her beloved high school English teacher, whose career ended in disgrace after a local scandal.
Although there is no scheduled starting shoot date, Sony is looking to get the project going before the book gets published by HarperCollins in June. For Quick, the success of Silver Linings Playbook has seen his other novels get the Hollywood treatment. The Weinstein Company purchased the rights to his young adult novel Every Exquisite Thing just last week. He also had deals in place for some other works of his, although nothing has been confirmed yet.