Dis Comes Up With 'Hush' Money
(Hollywood Reporter) -- In a pre-emptive purchase, the Walt Disney Co. has paid mid-six figures for feature film rights to the novel "Sweet Hush" by author Deborah Smith. Studio-based producer Debra Martin Chase ("The Princess Diaries") will produce a big-screen version of the novel, which is being published in March by Little, Brown & Co. "Hush" is about the widowed female head of an Appalachian apple-growing empire who is pitted against the White House when her only son comes home from Harvard after having secretly married the president's daughter. Smith is a romance novelist who has published such novels as "Blue Willow," "Silk and Stone" and "A Place to Call Home." "Hush" is the first of her works to be optioned by a major studio.
(Hollywood Reporter) -- In a pre-emptive purchase, the Walt Disney Co. has paid mid-six figures for feature film rights to the novel "Sweet Hush" by author Deborah Smith. Studio-based producer Debra Martin Chase ("The Princess Diaries") will produce a big-screen version of the novel, which is being published in March by Little, Brown & Co. "Hush" is about the widowed female head of an Appalachian apple-growing empire who is pitted against the White House when her only son comes home from Harvard after having secretly married the president's daughter. Smith is a romance novelist who has published such novels as "Blue Willow," "Silk and Stone" and "A Place to Call Home." "Hush" is the first of her works to be optioned by a major studio.