With his stories – including this year’s Zac Efron effort The Lucky One – proving reliable at the box office, studios are unsurprisingly keeping the Nicholas Sparks treacle train trundling along. Warner Bros. now has its eye on The Best Of Me, and has Gambit director Michael Hoffman in talks to make it.

So confident is the studio about this particular Sparks book that it bought the thing before it was even written. Sparks pitched the idea to executives and Warners jumped at the chance to adapt the embryonic novel, hiring Pride scribe J. Mills Goodloe to crank out the script. Now The Lucky One’s Will Fetters is being hired to rewrite it.

The Best Of Me follows two middle-aged people who used to be high school sweethearts. Their lives have since taken very different paths, but when they meet up once more at a funeral in their old hometown, they confront their past and begin thinking about the future. Then all the cars in the town come to life and begin killing peo... No? Oh, all right – just the romantic stuff.

Sparks’ latest film, Safe Haven, is set to weep its way on to our screens next year. Meanwhile, why don’t you follow our handy guide to which Sparks film you could be watching – either by choice or at gun point...