Hostage story goes to Hollywood
Dragon Tattoo’s Mara to play Canadian captured in Somalia
A Hollywood movie production company and Oscarnominated actor Rooney Mara have optioned a bestselling memoir by an Alberta woman held hostage in Somalia.
Amanda Lindhout’s A House in the Sky details torture and abuse the freelance journalist endured while she was held captive for 15 months, along with an Australian photographer.
The book, co-written by Sara Corbett, a contributing writer with the New York Times Magazine, has been on several bestseller lists since it was released last fall.
Annapurna Pictures says in a news release there was a competitive pursuit for the book’s movie rights.
The company has produced award-winning films such as American Hustle, Her and Zero Dark Thirty.
Mara was nominated for an Academy Award in 2012 for her performance in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
The release says the book is to be developed as a starring vehicle for Mara who will also serve as a producer of the movie.
“Rooney Mara is someone whose talent and adventurous spirit I admire deeply,” says Lindhout, 33.
“I’m thrilled that she’s teaming with Annapurna Pictures to bring A House in the Sky to the screen. I can’t imagine a better match.”
In the book, Lindhout recounts her childhood in Red Deer and the time she spent working as a cocktail waitress in Calgary before she became a travel junkie turned journalist.
She and Nigel Brennan, an ex-boyfriend, were on their way to do a story about a camp for displaced people outside Mogadishu in August 2008 when they were taken by a group of armed men hoping to exchange their release for ransom money.
They were not released until November 2009.
The book reveals how the families of the kidnapped pair eventually gave up on the Canadian and Australian governments and co-ordinated their release through a private hostage negotiator.
The families paid more than $1 million of which about $600,000 went to the kidnappers and the rest paid the negotiator’s fees.