Columbia Pictures has acquired the rights to Joshua Foer’s recent book Moonwalking With Einstein, which is currently in 19th place on the New York Times best-seller list in the non-fiction.
Variety reports that Matthew Tolmach will produce the adaptation for Columbia, although it doesn’t seem that a screenwriter is attached to adapt the book yet. Moonwalking With Einstein is told from the author’s perspective, a science journalist who learned how to increase his memory capacity when he covered the US Memory Championship, which he then also entered as a participant.
Here’s what Columbia Pictures president Doug Belgrad had to say about the book: “This is a very special book which transcends the already fascinating subject of memory. By explaining in personal and entertaining fashion a great deal about how our brains work, Joshua has written a book that sheds light on how memory is connected to humanity.”
Although on the surface it doesn’t sound like the most interesting subject for a film, if they can find a way to deal with the memory feats visually, it could be rather interesting, showing us, for example, how current world memory champion, Ben Pridmore, can memorise the exact order of 1,528 digits in an hour. Foer also met with individuals whose memories are truly unique, from one man whose memory only extends back to his most recent thought, to another who can memorise complex mathematical formulas without knowing any math. It does douns like they’ll be adding a lot of plot elements in to turn it into a workable film, but there’s definitely an intriguin hook there.