Angelina Jolie and Aimee Lou Wood Cast in the Adaptation of a Spectacular Novel

For those who may be looking for a reading recommendation for the long weekend, I just want to briefly suggest Fredrik Backman’s new novel, My Friends. It’s my favorite novel since … Fredrik Backman’s Beartown trilogy. The man creates phenomenal characters, writes moving, heartfelt stories, and has a terrific understanding of the human condition. My Friends is basically Good Will Hunting crossed with Stand By Me crossed with Backman’s A Man Called Ove, and it’s another outstanding, humanistic novel about disparate people finding connection. I loved it.

But between the last novel in The Beartown trilogy and My Friends, Backman also wrote the terrific Anxious People, which is about a desperate man who takes a group of people hostage and … well, the situation ends up connecting them all, including the hostage taker. Here’s how Deadline describes the novel: “When a reluctant bank robber inadvertently takes the group hostage, chaos and oversharing ensue, secrets are revealed and literally nothing goes according to plan. The movie is described as being ‘about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined.’” It’s a beautiful novel that is, again, about the best of humanity. If people were half as good as a Backman character, we’d be in really good shape.

Anxious People, meanwhile, is being turned into a film from director Marc Forster, who also directed Tom Hanks’ A Man Called Otto, based on a Backman novel. Anxious People is in Forster’s lane, if you forget that he directed a Bond movie and remember, instead, that he also directed Will Ferrell’s moving Stranger Than Fiction, which happens to be one of my favorite films.

Forster has nabbed his first two cast members, and he’s gotten very lucky with them. Angelina Jolie will play an investment banker caught up in the hostage situation, and now Aimee Lou Wood has been cast, coming off her breakout role in White Lotus. They’re great additions—especially because, while I’m sure Jolie and Aimee Lou Wood will have beefed-up roles, this is basically an ensemble. And a lovely one, at that.