Movie Deal: Carla Norton

nortoncarla edgenormal
Matt Venne has built a reputation of writing film scripts that veer on horror—Masters of Horror, Fear Itself, and the miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s Bag of Bones.

Now he has been tapped for a script that is a bit more realistic, yet just as terrifying.

Venne has written an adaptation of Carla Norton’s debut novel, The Edge of Normal.

The Edge of Normal, about a young woman rebuilding her life after being held by a kidnapper for years, offers more than a ripped-from-the-headlines pastiche, as I said in my review of Norton’s 2013 fiction debut.

My review also stated that Norton “delivers an emotional story of a woman fighting to regain her sense of self, to reach, at least, an edge of normal without falling. Reeve LeClaire, who was kidnaped when she was 12 and held for four years, doesn’t want people to see her only as a victim but as a survivor.

“Now 22 and living on her own in San Francisco, Reeve forces herself to deal with traumatic stress that will always linger because of her ordeal. She maintains a precise routine and sessions with a compassionate therapist who is an authority on ‘captivity syndrome,’” I added.

In 1988, Norton co-wrote the true crime book Perfect Victim about Colleen Stan, a young hitchhiker who was picked up in California by a couple who kept her captive as a sex slave for seven years.

Norton’s novel The Edge of Normal won the Royal Palm Literary Award and was a finalist for the Thriller Award.

According to Variety.com and a couple of other sources, Bold Films is developing the thriller as a movie after outbidding several other potential buyers for Venne’s script.

One of the things that made The Edge of Normal so intriguing was Norton’s compassionate view of victims and their recovery.

Hopefully, the film version can hold on to that aspect of The Edge of Normal.

Oline Cogdill
2015-08-19 19:50:00