Publishers Weekly Celebrates "House"

Matia Burnett at Publishers Weekly provides some background on John Bellairs and the forthcoming movie:

Before there was “The Boy Who Lived,” there was Lewis Barnavelt, a 10-year-old orphan who brushed shoulders with wizards, witches, sorcerers, ghosts, and his share of occultists. With the film adaptation of John Bellairs’s 1973 novel, The House with a Clock in Its Walls, releasing on September 21, a new generation of readers will have the opportunity to discover Bellairs’s storytelling. The film stars Owen Vaccaro (Daddy’s Home), Jack Black (Goosebumps) and Cate Blanchett (Ocean's 8), and is directed by Eli Roth (Cabin Fever), marking the horror director’s first “family-friendly” film.

In 2011, Bradley J. Fischer and James Vanderbilt of Mythology Entertainment approached screenwriter Eric Kripke (creator of "Supernatural") for the film project. As a child of the 1980s, Kripke was very familiar with Bellairs. Kripke recently told Entertainment Weekly that “when I was 10, I fell in love with this book.” In fact, the only fan letter Kripke ever wrote as a child was to Bellairs.

Thanks, Matia!