‘Netherland’ to Become a Film, and Mendes May Direct

In a review of the Sam Mendes film “Away We Go” in The New York Times, A. O. Scott described that director as “a literary tourist from Britain who has missed the point every time he has crossed the ocean.” So how will Mr. Mendes handle the adaptation of a literary work about New York whose author and narrator both have roots on the opposite side of the Atlantic? We may soon find out: Variety reported that Mr. Mendes’s production company has joined with Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions and Focus Features to create a film adaptation of the Joseph O’Neill novel “Netherland” that Mr. Mendes may direct. The novel, which follows a Dutch-born stockbroker in New York from the 1990s to the present decade, won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for Mr. O’Neill, an American citizen of Turkish and Irish descent who was raised partly in the Netherlands. Christopher Hampton will write the “Netherland” screenplay; a cast and release date were not announced.