CBS Films has acquired film rights to Simon & Schuster's upcoming book "The Christmas Cookie Club" by first-time novelist Ann Pearlman.
Wendy Finerman ("The Devil Wears Prada," "Forrest Gump") is producing.
Story revolves around an annual holiday celebration in which a dozen women trade their homemade cookies. As the evening unfolds, the friends bare their personal adventures of the past 12 months.
Peter Miller, who is Pearlman's lit agent, will exec produce.
Project offers the fledgling CBS Films an opportunity for corporate synergy. "Christmas Cookie Club" will be published in hardcover by Simon & Schuster's Atria Books in November with a 350,000-copy first printing. Book will also go out through Simon & Schuster's publishing divisions in the U.K., Canada and Australia -- a rare occurrence given that most S&S books published in the U.S. are not typically handled by the company's foreign units. Both Simon & Schuster and CBS Films are divisions of CBS Corp.
Finerman's relationship with CBS Films prexy-chief exec Amy Baer dates back a long way. Baer was a production exec on "Stepmom," which Finerman produced.
The producer, whose most recent credit is "P.S. I Love You," has a number of films set up at various studios, including the Tobey Maguire vehicle "Everything Changes" at Columbia Pictures.
Pearlman is the author of two nonfiction works: the memoir "Infidelity" and "Inside the Crips."
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