Entertainment One is looking to ace The Test.
The production company is developing a movie version of Sylvain Neuvel’s Kirkus-starred thriller novella, with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’s John Boyega and A Separation’s Payman Maadi set to co-star, according to Deadline. Gavin Hood, who helmed the 2013 film of Orson Scott Card’s 1984 SF novel, Ender’s Game, is attached as writer and director.
The 2019 novella is set in a dystopian future England where Iranian dentist Idir Jalil must, like all immigrants, take a citizenship exam called the British Values Assessment Test; if he fails, he and his family face deportation. On the day of his exam, however, the immigration office is attacked by terrorists who take a crowd of people hostage—including Jalil. Before long, the gunmen force him to make a series of decisions about who lives or dies. His wife and children are among the captives, and it dawns on him that their fates could be in his hands. Kirkus’ reviewer called the book a “thought-provoking and disturbing…cautionary tale illuminated with dark enlightenment.”
Maadi is set to play Jalil, with Boyega portraying a psychologist at the immigration office. Boyega has co-starred in other book adaptations over the past decade, including a 2017 movie version of Dave Eggers’ 2013 novel, The Circle, and a 2018 animated Netflix/BBC miniseries of Richard Adams’ 1974 classic, Watership Down, in which he voiced the role of Bigwig.
Neuvel’s debut SF novel, Sleeping Giants, received a starred review from Kirkus Indie in 2014; the novel was published Del Rey Books two years later and also optioned for film by Sony Pictures. Its sequels include 2017’s Waking Gods, which also received a Kirkus Star, and 2018’s Only Human.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
