Cinematical

Once you hit your mid- or late twenties (unless you were a Doogie child genius), your attention is drawn to that looming link back to high school -- the reunion. I sometimes wonder how much the act is to reconnect with friends you've lost touch with, and how much is to show off and feed those curiosities about who everyone became. Antony Moore has pretty much asked the same thing in his not-yet-released British novel, The Swap: "Since I last saw them I've not got married, or had any children, or got a promotion, or inherited a fortune; I've been doing exactly the same things I was doing last time I went." "Well tell them you've expanded." "They'll see that for themselves."

Now Columbia Pictures has bought into the thought, optioning the upcoming black comedy novel for John Calley to produce. Swap is about a man named Harvey Briscow -- a drinker, smoker and comic-book shopowner who isn't itching to go to his next class reunion, because nothing has changed for him. However, his friend and lone employee Josh suggests that he might use the night as an opportunity to get back a rare comic he had swapped years ago. This quest embroils the protagonist in "murder, romance and the revelation of a long-held secret." Just a wild thought, but I imagine that they'll look for someone like Simon Pegg to head it. That is, if they keep it British. Sure, Columbia could make a stateside adaptation, but then it will lose that dark, tasty humor. Do you have any better ideas?