Hannah Marks to Direct Film Adaptation of John Green's "Turtles All the Way Down"
Calling all people who have watched The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns over and over to the point where you can recite each movie by heart. (OK, maybe that’s just me, but you’ll still want to hear this.) John Green’s 2017 novel, Turtles All the Way Down is officially headed to the big screen — and it already has a director attached.
The Hollywood Reporter reports that Hannah Marks will take the directorial reigns on the upcoming Fox 2000 film, which will be produced by Green, Rosianna Halse Rojas, Isaac Klausner and Marty Bowen. As noted by Variety, Hannah — who appeared on MTV’s Awkard and BBC America’s Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency — is one of the youngest women to direct a studio film in Hollywood history. The movie will be adapted for the screen by Elizabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker; the team also worked on Love, Simon and This Is Us.
For the uninitiated, Turtles All the Way Down tells the story of 16-year-old Aza, who struggles with OCD. The novel touches upon themes of friendship, growth, and mental health, all while following Aza as she and a friend search for a missing billionaire involved in a fraud scandal.
According to Variety, Green noted that although the novel was fictional, the story was “quite personal” to him. “This is my first attempt to write directly about the kind of mental illness that has affected my life since childhood,” the author further explained.
Green himself has OCD, and has been open with his fans and readers about living with mental illness. In a 2017 interview with NPR, the author and YouTuber revealed that he didn’t set out to write a character with OCD, but ultimately, Aza’s creation felt inevitable. “I couldn't write about anything else,” Green added. “I have OCD and it is a really important part of my life, and at times it is a disabling part of my life. But I also have a really wonderful, fulfilling life.”
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