Martin Scorsese will direct a film adaptation of Peter Cameron’s What Happens at Night, Deadline reports.
Cameron’s novel, published in 2020 by Catapult, follows an American couple who travel to Europe to adopt a baby and find themselves in a land populated by bizarre characters where nothing is as it seems. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the book “a dreamy fable confronting love, death, and our inevitable inadequacy yet persistence in the face of both.”
Leonardo DiCaprio, who has worked with Scorsese on films including The Aviator and The Wolf of Wall Street, is attached to star in the film alongside Jennifer Lawrence, whose latest movie, Die, My Love, is scheduled for release in November. Patrick Marber (Asylum, Notes on a Scandal) will write the screenplay.
Scorsese’s previous literary adaptations include films based on Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, Joe Connelly’s Bringing Out the Dead, Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island, and David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon.
Cameron’s novels have been adapted for the screen before. His novel The City of Your Final Destination was made into a 2009 film directed by James Ivory and starring Anthony Hopkins and Laura Linney, while Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You formed the basis for a 2011 movie directed by Roberto Faenza and starring Toby Regbo and Marcia Gay Harden.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
