Amidst all the awards buzz for their new movie Killers of the Flower Moon, The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that Lily Gladstone — who recently made history as the first Indigenous US-born woman nominated for an Oscar — and Martin Scorsese will reunite for a big screen adaptation of Yōko Ogawa's 1994 sci-fi novel The Memory Police.
Scorsese has been attached as an executive producer of the project alongside Ogawa herself, while The Handmaid's Tale director Reed Morano will be behind the camera. Charlie Kaufman, who won an Oscar in 2004 for penning the Jim Carrey classic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, has adapted the script.
An official synopsis of The Memory Police reads:
On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses — until things become much more serious. Most of the island's inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten.
When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.
Initially published in Japanese, the novel has been recognized with numerous esteemed Japanese awards and, for its English translation, the National Book Award for Translated Literature.
The adaptation has yet to receive a release date or further casting information at this point.
