EMO Films has acquired the rights to Jacquelyn Mitchard’s best-selling novel, “Cage of Stars.” Mitchard, awarded the first Oprah Book Club distinction in 1996 for “The Deep End of the Ocean”—which was adapted as a 1999 feature starring Michelle Pfeiffer—is credited as a producer.
Pic centers around young Veronica (“Ronnie”) Swan, whose idyllic life in her Mormon community is shattered when her two younger sisters are brutally murdered by the schizophrenic Scott Early. As a remorseful Early is sentenced to a maximum security facility for the criminally mentally ill, his disability is increasingly tempered by medication and therapy. Guided by their faith, Ronnie’s parents take the unusual steps to visit and ultimately forgive him, as their surviving daughter silently plots to drop her strict religious identity and exact her revenge upon his release…
EMO Films managing partners Joel Eisenberg (also co-founder of film financing network All Cities Media), Eugene Mandelcorn and Timothy Owens will Executive Produce. Upcoming projects for EMO Films include the biopic “Ghoulishly Yours, William M. Gaines,” written by Eisenberg, to be directed by John Landis, and the fact-based high school drama “April Showers”—written and directed by Columbine shootings survivor Andrew Robinson—commencing principal photography on May 8.
