Chuck Leavitt will adapt Dave King's acclaimed debut novel The Ha-Ha: A Novel.
The Hollywood Reporter says Leavitt will write the screenplay with Akiva Goldsman directing fro Warner Bros.
The novel follows Howard Kapostash, a quiet man, literally. Sixteen days into his tour of duty in Vietnam he was severely injured in a land mine explosion. Beating the odds by surviving at all, Howard was left without the ability to process language. Unable to speak, read or write but perfectly capable of understanding the spoken word and forming his own thoughts, it’s a cruel disability for an otherwise sound mind to endure. With communication limited to a handful of gestures and a few noises, Howard has quietly slipped into a safe routine revolving around his job as groundskeeper for a convent.
This tightly controlled life is completely thrown into disarray when Howard’s high school sweetheart Sylvia calls upon him to watch over Ryan, her nine-year old son while she gets dragged into rehab by her sister. Howard has never quit carrying the torch for Sylvia and as he can’t really say no, finds himself having to care for the young boy.
You can read our review of the novel in the database .
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