Morning Moon Productions Options Michael Frank’s Novel ‘What Is Missing’

Justin Kroll
·2 min read

EXCLUSIVE: Morning Moon Productions has optioned the rights to award-winning author Michael Frank’s novel What Is Missing with Frank on board to also adapt.

What Is Missing is a powerful drama about a father, son, and the woman they both love. Costanza Ansaldo, an Italian-American translator, thinks she has made peace with her childlessness. A year after the death of her husband, she returns to the pensione in Florence where she lived in her youth. There she has a chance encounter with Andrew Weissman, a sensitive 18-year-old, and, soon afterward, his father, Dr. Henry Weissman, a charismatic New York physician who specializes in reproductive medicine. When the characters reunite months later in New York City, they become tangled in a web of lies, family secrets, and buried desires. In time, the truth finally surfaces, and it will change them forever.

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The film will be produced by Ethan Lazar, Kyle Owens, Austen Rydell, and Billie Lourd.

Frank also authored the memoir and 2018 winner of the JQ-Wingate prize, The Mighty Franks, which chronicles his own life growing up in an eccentric Hollywood family.

Morning Moon’s most recent project, Wildflower, directed by Matt Smukler and financed by eOne and Limelight, will have its world premiere this September at the Toronto International Film Festival. Lazar, Owens, Rydell, and Lourd produced alongside Hunting Lane. The film stars Kiernan Shipka, Jean Smart, Alexandra Daddario, Jacki Weaver, Charlie Plummer, Dash Mihok, Reid Scott and Samantha Hyde.

Additionally, Morning Moon optioned Mallory Weggeman’s memoir Limitless. The memoir, written by five-time Paralympic swimming medalist Weggemann, follows the empowering journey of the athlete’s life after a routine epidural injection for back pain left her paralyzed from the waist down at 18 years old.

Lazar and Jackie Eckhouse negotiated the rights deal on behalf of Morning Moon. Frank is represented by UTA. Morning Moon is repped by CAA.

 

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