J.J. Abrams Is Developing Let the Great World Spin
J.J. Abrams is negotiating to produce an adaptation of Colum McCann’s period novel Let the Great World Spin.Built around Philippe Petit’s real-life “artistic crime of the century” where the Frenchman illegally walked a tightrope strung between the World Trade Center towers in August 1974. The film and story Let the Great World Spin follows an ensemble cast of characters struggling throughout New York amidst that historic event.
McCann’s fifth novel was published in June by Random House.
The book’s characters include a young Irish monk living among prostitutes in the Bronx; a group of mothers mourning their sons, killed in Vietnam, in a Park Avenue apartment; and a 38-year-old grandmother walking the streets with her teenage daughter. With comparisons to Don DeLillo’s work, McCann’s novel serves as an allegory of 9/11 and its aftermath.
Anything Abrams is doing I am on board with and its no surprise he’d want to do something involving an ensemble cast as well good character development opportunity.
