The Best Book You Can Find in a Hospital Gift Shop Is About To Become a TV Show
The Five People You Meet in Heaven, a book that held my heart and tear ducts in a stranglehold for basically the whole of seventh grade, is about to become a new series. Fox has announced that the book will be adapted into a one-hour drama program, with author Mitch Albom himself slated to write and executive-produce. I’m guessing this will be better than the super trite TV adaptation from 2004 with Jon Voight and Ellen Burstyn and like, okay, Jeff Daniels doing a soft-spoken Dracula accent to play an Eastern-European immigrant (I love Jeff Daniels, but this casting baffles me to this day).
The story is about a carnival ride maintenance worker named Eddie, who dies on his 83rd birthday trying to save a little girl from being crushed when an attraction breaks. He winds up in a kind of purgatory, where he meets (guess how many?) five people whose lives have been connected to his in one way or another—allowing him to reflect on different chapters of his time on earth in order to properly make peace with the life he has lived.
Yes, the logic of this book makes absolutely no sense and the whole thing is pretty corny. But if you like entertainment featuring old people looking back on their lives, seaside amusement parks, and evening waltzes underneath bandshells, like I do, then you’ll probably cry your eyes out too.
[h/t Variety]
