The film based on John Gray's relationship bible Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus has just picked up its screenwriters, in the forms of Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan. The world is not surprised to hear that the pair will wrestle the property into a romantic comedy shape.

Gray's thesis is that men and women are, on the surface, completely incompatible, and his book attempts to make the vast gender gulf easier to negotiate with advice on how to find common ground. Written in 1992, it continues to be a mainstay of the self-help shelves, and has sold 50m copies in 45 translations. It spawned a spinoff series, countless rip-offs, and a song on the second Curve album.

Summit entertainment, with an eye on replicating the non-fiction-book-to-relationship-movie trajectory of He's Just Not That Into You, picked up the rights last spring, so have taken their time finding the right scribes for the script.

Elfont and Kaplan come to the job with Leap Year and Made of Honour the most recent additions to their writing CV. The pair also wrote and co-directed Josie and the Pussycats (which is, y'know, really rather good) in 2001, and have been working together since they met at university. That gender gap doesn't seem to bother them.