Oscar-winning screenwriter and director Dustin Lance Black might not be your first thought to enter the YA genre — but he’s certainly got experience in teaching people about love.
The screenwriter of the gay rights biopic “Milk” is next tackling “The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight,” a bestselling novel from Jennifer E. Smith which he adapted and will direct.
Though his protagonists are only 17, they have wisdom beyond their years for a Trump era audience, Black said.
“We need more people being brave enough to love, and this is a story about a young woman who does that with someone who lives in a different culture and a different country,” Black said, chatting for TheWrap’s Emmy magazine about his ABC miniseries “When We Rise.”
Smith’s story tells of two young strangers who meet after narrowly missing a fight bound for London’s Heathrow International.
The material has been likened to a YA version of “Before Sunrise.” Black elaborated on his motives for snatching up the rights to the project, which sprang from his work on the politics of “Rise,” especially in our turbulent modern times.
“We need to maybe think a little less about the science of building walls and that waste of time and energy and start to understand what is love. What is it? Let’s examine it. Let’s examine the science, the statistics of love. ”
Watch a clip of Black above. Among the “Love at First Sight” producers is Bruna Papandrea — the former producing partner of Reese Witherspoon who previously translated the literary smash “Gone Girl” into an Academy Award-nominated drama with Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike.