BBC News Online: Entertainment: Film

Billy director targets The Corrections

Daldry with Billy Elliot actor Jamie Bell (L): 40 awards

Jonathan Franzen's book attracted critical acclaim and recently won the US National Book Award.

But the author also courted controversy, when he admitted being reluctant to allow it to be named as book of the month by the influential Oprah Winfrey book club.

The novel portrays three generations of a deeply dysfunctional Midwestern family, gathering for a final Christmas at the family home.

Paramount-based producer Scott Rudin bought the rights to film the novel with his own money in summer 2001 - before it was published, by Farrar Straus & Giroux.

Screenwriter David Hare has already begun adapting the book for Mr Rudin, and production is expected to begin this winter.

The team of Daldry, Hare and Rudin has just completed the film adaptation of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours.

Professor

The Hours is set to be released in the late autumn.

Stephen Daldry was recently named as the 2002 Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre at the University of Oxford.

Though best known as the director of box office hit Billy Elliot, he has also directed many award-winning theatre productions.

Since opening worldwide, Billy Elliot has won more than 40 awards, including three Baftas, while its director received an Oscar nomination for best director and a Golden Globe nomination for best film.