Awesome Adaptations: The Night Circus Needs to Be A Film

Awesome Adaptations is a weekly bookish meme, hosted at Alisa Selene’s book blog, Picture Me Reading. Anyone can play along! Picture Me Reading is a book review site where Alisa draws her reviews. She is a wonderful artist and her reviews are excellent. You should definitely check out her blog. Today’s adaption is: An awesome book that needs to be adapted (and the cast you’d like to see perform it!). While The Night Circus has been optioned by Summit Entertainment, there is little to no news about whether a screen adaption and movie will be happening any time soon. So, I’m still counting this as a book that needs to be adapted.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is a magical book, and not just because it is about the lives of illusionist who have actual magical powers, but because of the vivid descriptions in the narrative. If you want to read my full review of the book, you can read it here. Several stories interweave in this wonderful tale. Two old illusionist pick up apprentices and teach them how to work illusions, the apprentices much compete with each other by building illusion upon illusion. The setting is a circus. Each tent and attraction has been created by one of the illusionists.

The circus itself becomes one of the characters in the book and Morgenstern weaves a beautiful setting with her prose describing the visual look to the circus. The colors are very important, every thing is in black and white, and the Circus fan boys and girls start wearing a piece of red to distinguish themselves from the casual circus goer. Each tent has its own theme and color scheme. I can just envision what the circus would look like and feel like as a movie adaptation, and I eagerly await Summit actually producing a film based on the book.

The other characters are quiet charming and several relationship dynamics build up over the course of the story. I think the interplay of interesting circus folk would make for a charming film. As to the two old illusionist I can see Donald Sutherland and Hugh Laurie playing the parts.  I think someone like Alexis Bledel, who is an excellent actress, would do a wonderful job portraying Celia Bowen under the tutelage of her father Prospero the Enchanter (Donald Sutherland). The male apprentice  is nuanced and conniving, so I immediately think of Ian Somerhalder, but that may just be because of my recent obsession with The Vampire Diaries and because I’ve seen him in period pieces. I think The Night Circus would be an easy adaption, so I’m crossing my fingers that it will make its way to the big screen some day and I could relive the wonder of the circus in a new format.