Olivia Wilde, A24 Team Up for A Visit From the Goon Squad TV Series
Olivia Wilde has found her next blockbuster project. On Friday, reports revealed that Wilde is attached to direct and executive produce an adaptation of the A Visit from the Goon Squad series. The book, as well as its sequel The Candy House, were both written by Jennifer Egan, with Goon Squad winning the 2011 Pulitzer Prize. A24 has optioned the rights for the series.
What are A Visit from the Goon Squad and The Candy House about?
A Visit From The Goon Squad follows 13 short stories that move from past to present, all of which connect back to Bennie Salazar, a record company executive, and his assistant, Sasha. 2022's The Candy House focuses on some of A Visit From The Goon Squad's same characters and their children.
"I was very eager to use narrative approaches I hadn't used in Goon Squad," Egan explained in a 2022 interview with The Daily Beast. "The first challenge was just that it [The Candy House] has a predecessor, which felt really challenging, because what I found with Goon Squad was that each chapter became harder to write than the last because each time I was more hemmed in by preexisting facts about characters and events. So the freewheeling feeling that I like to have when I write first drafts—it was very hard to accomplish that. A related challenge was, how is this going to not just be a kind of tepid echo of Goon Squad? I would never have published it if I felt like that was happening, and that was a serious possibility. I always gave myself that out. Like, you don't have to write another book about this, I never promised it ever. No one's holding me to it. Like, who cares? So that was one thing. Then there was the challenge of having decided to adhere to certain things about Goon Squad to keep them related—if it is a sort of companion volume, what are the things I want to keep? And those things were the three structural choices about Goon Squad that I think are somewhat defining. One is that each chapter stands completely on its own. One is that each chapter is from a different point of view. And the third is just each one has to be technically distinct from the others and have a different kind of texture and vibe from the others. I could have tried something else like writing a more conventional novel about someone in that book, but that felt like it would fall into the category of tepid echo."
What are Olivia Wilde's next movies?
Wilde most recently helmed last year's Don't Worry Darling, which made headlines for a wide array of reasons upon its October 2022 debut. Since 2020, she has also been in talks to direct a movie centered around Marvel's Spider-Woman for Sony Pictures.
"That, I can't say a word about. Yeah, no — I can't say anything about it. I have to bury myself in the couch now." Wilde explained in an interview last year. "I will say that I think the Marvel approach of allowing newer filmmakers to come into the fold and have access to those tools of the Marvel universe is incredibly exciting. I am a big fan of what they're doing over there, but, yeah, I can't confirm whether that is what that is. But that would be cool."
What do you think of Olivia Wilde and A24 working on an adaptation of A Visit from the Goon Squad and The Candy House? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
h/t: Deadline