Shooting underway for The Jane Austen Book Club (NEWS)

Joy Fowler's The Jane Austen Book Club has been greenlighted and is currently filming in Los Angeles. The novel, which charts the personal lives of a small gathering of Californian Jane Austen fans who meet regularly to discuss the author and her works , is set to be adapted to screen by Robin Swicord, who is also due to direct. Swicord penned the script for the 1994 adaptation of Little Women, directed by Gillian Armstrong, Dahl's Matilda in 1996 and more recently, Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha in 2005. Maria Bello, Emily Blunt, Hugh Dancy, Lynn Redgrave, Jimmy Smits and Kathy Baker are set to star. Swicord seems a fair choice for this material which was one of the dreariest novels I have read for some years - and as I have been less than impressed with much of Swicord's work to date, (possibly excepting Matilda), I can feel fairly certain this far out that here is a film I will be keen to avoid when it finally hits our cinema screens next year.