Screen Daily is reporting that Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment has optioned the movie rights to British author Jason Arnopp’s supernatural novel The Last Days of Jack Sparks, enlisting Arnopp to pen the script.
The 2016 novel “follows titular pop culture journalist Jack Sparks who is researching a book on the occult. After sparking a Twitter storm by mocking an exorcism, Sparks is found dead in mysterious circumstances.”
“Jack Sparks is a tremendously fascinating, entertaining, and entirely contemporary movie character,” said Howard. “His journey into the supernatural and his clashes with those forces and with himself are hilarious, disturbing, exciting and surprising as hell. I couldn’t put the book down and I believe it will be a blast for audiences to experience the movie version.”
“Ron Howard is a living legend, so it’s absolutely wonderful to see the director of Apollo 13, The Da Vinci Code and Frost/Nixon place so much faith in The Last Days Of Jack Sparks,” added Arnopp. “Ron and his ingenious production wizards have been a joy to deal with and I’m having a blast writing the script. I know the late Jack Sparks would feel his posthumous book is being ferried towards the silver screen by exactly the right people.”
Originally published April 3, 2017. Updated April 15, 2018.
