Books to Film Forecast: Cloud Atlas, On the Road, Lawless

There’s a slew of book-to-film news in light of Cannes 2012, going on right now. Let’s get to it.

*Cloud Atlas (which we put at #2 on our most anticipated book adaptations of 2012) has been bought by Warner Bros. for $20 million, after having been made for $101 million (and initially estimated at $170 million). The film is made by Matrix directors the Wachowski brothers and a 2 hour, 44 minute cut (with incomplete special effects) screened for buyers at Cannes to positive buzz. Cloud Atlas has been given a December 6 release date. It stars Tom Hanks, Ben Whishaw, Hugo Weaving, Susan Sarandon, Jim Broadbent, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant, and Halle Berry.

*Also playing at Cannes is Killing Them Softly, the heist-and-mob picture from Andrew Dominik, whose first film was the masterful (PWxyz’s opinion) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The film is based on George V. Higgins’s Cogan’s Trade, written in 1974. The cast: Brad Pitt, Sam Rockwell, Ray Liotta, James Gandolfini. Release is set for September 21. Check out the film’s first clip:

*Lawless, another film to make our top 10 most anticipated for the year, has also been screened at Cannes to mixed reviews. Hollywood Reporter praised the film’s “brooding sense of dread” and “juicy character portraits,” while Entertainment Weekly called it a “dud” and said it was bad, even by Sundance standards. The film is based on Matt Bondurant’s The Wettest County in the World, which follows Depression-era bootleggers in Virginia. It stars Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain, and Guy Pearce, and is set for release on August 31. Check out the trailer: