Food memoir adaptation Garlic And Sapphires is having a rough ride as it travels down the development gullet, trying to find its way to the production stomach.
It’s already stuck in the throat at HBO, which had worked on adapting the book as a half-hour comedy series, before ditching it into turnaround.
But now Fox 2000 has come to its rescue, attaching The Notebook’s Jeremy Leven to write it up as a film. The story takes its basis from both Sapphires and writer Ruth Reichl’s previous book, Comfort Me With Apples, and finds her making the leap from chef to critic, all the while donning disguises so restaurant owners and fellow kitchen types don’t recognise her. "It has a great hook - it's a columnist who has to don disguises so she won't be known, and is in one of those disguises when she meets the man she falls in love with,” producer Cary Brokaw told Variety.
There’s no director or cast attached yet.