‘Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again’ Helmer Ol Parker To Write & Direct Film Adaptation Of ‘This Is Chance!’ Book For Concordia Studio

Amanda N'Duka
·2 min read

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Ol Parker has signed on to adapt Jon Mooallem’s recently released book This Is Chance!: The Shaking of an All-American City, A Voice That Held It Together, which Concordia Studio acquired the rights to develop and produce. Parker will write and direct the film. He’s known for writing and directing Universal’s Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Fox Searchlight’s Imagine Me & You, as well as writing The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and the sequel The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Concordia co-founder Jonathan King will produce this project. The story takes place spring of 1964 in Anchorage, Alaska, a modern-day frontier town yearning to be a metropolis until the community was jolted by the most powerful earthquake in American history, a catastrophic magnitude of 9.2. For four and a half minutes, the ground lurched and rolled. Streets cracked open and swallowed buildings whole. And once the shaking stopped, night fell and Anchorage went dark. Genie Chance was a part-time radio reporter who would play an unlikely and crucial role in the wake of the disaster, helping to hold her fractured town together and emerging after as a legendary figure at home in Alaska and worldwide.

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The book was released in March via Random House Publishing Group.

Mooallem will serve as executive producer with Concordia VP Patrick Callan overseeing development. UTA brokered the deal on Mooallem’s behalf.

Parker, who wrote the upcoming Netflix film, A Boy Called Christmas, starring Kristen Wiig, Judi Dench, Sally Hawkins, and Jim Broadbent, is repped by UTA, Knight Hall Agency in the UK, Management 360, and Goodman, Genow, Schenkman, Smelkinson & Christopher. Mooallem is also repped by The Wylie Agency.

 

 

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