The Stolen Child

Amazon.com is moving from selling books and other odds an ends to making movies. A sure sign that they’ve got too much money.

Variety says the online retailer is optioning the movie rights to the Keith
Donahue novel “The Stolen Child”. They won’t actually finance the
production, instead they’re shopping it around to Hollywood studios and other potential partners looking for
someone who actually knows something about movies to put it on movie screens.

Amazon.com spokesman Drew Herdner says “With our brand and our retail
experience and customers around the world we believe we can be an extremely
valuable partner in the development, marketing and distribution of this film.” In a way he’s right, though they seem more suited to a
multi-tiered marketing deal with a major Hollywood studio than actually
developing their own films. Take a look at what Starbucks did with Akeelah and the
Bee. They marketed the hell out of it in their stores and made a little money
off it, but they didn’t stick their noses into actually making movies. Something
like that seems like a better fit for Amazon.com than this.

But ever savvy Amazon.com has always been quick to jump on diversifying. On the web it's diversify or die. These days there’s almost
nothing you can’t buy on their site. In fact, you might have a hard time
actually finding the books with which they first got their selling start amidst
all the other millions of types of entertainment and shopping content.

So what exactly is The Stolen Child about? Amazon describes it as “a
bedtime story for adults”, which might give some of you horrifying flashbacks to
a certain recently released, reportedly very bad M. Night Shyamalan movie. Don’t
worry, no narfs here. In the book, two narrators tell intertwining stories. One,
an adult trying to remember his “stolen” childhood. The other, a 7-year-old
child trapped in time. Folk legends about changlings and faeries are mixed in to
link the two stories together when 7-year-old Henry is kidnapped by hobgoblins
and replaced by an imposter.

OK, so this has got to be seen :)

Slán