Winter's Tale: The Movie

A fantasy story set in 19th Century and present-day Manhattan and revolves around a thief, a dying girl, and a flying white horse. 

Jessica Brown Findlay

Director/Producer Akiva Goldman also wrote the screenplay adaptation of Mark Helpern's fantasy novel, Winter's Tale. It follows what happens when thief Peter Lake (played by Colin Farrell) breaks into a mansion in Manhattan and falls in love with the dying young woman, Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay- aka Lady Sybil Branson of Downton Abbey fame) he finds there. The movie will flit between present day NY, and a 19th century fantasy version of NY.

Rounding out the cast is Jennifer Connely, who plays Findlay's mother, Russell Crowe who plays the gangster Pearly Soams. Matt Bomer and Lucy Griffiths play Farrell's parents, Will Smith, Eva Marie Saint, and William Hurt. Set to release sometime in 2013.

Left to Right: Matt Bomer sporting colored lenses, Russell Crowe with a scar, Colin Farrell- all from the set.

WINTER'S TALE
by Mark Helprin
Available Now
ISBN-13: 978-0156031196, Pages: 760
Publisher: Mariner Books, paperback edition
Find it on Amazon, B&N, Goodreads
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New York City is subsumed in arctic winds, dark nights, and white lights, its life unfolds, for it is an extraordinary hive of the imagination, the greatest house ever built, and nothing exists that can check its vitality. One night in winter, Peter Lake, orphan and master-mechanic, attempts to rob a fortress-like mansion on the Upper West Side.

Though he thinks the house is empty, the daughter of the house is home. Thus begins the love between Peter Lake, a middle-aged Irish burglar, and Beverly Penn, a young girl, who is dying.

Peter Lake, a simple, uneducated man, because of a love that, at first he does not fully understand, is driven to stop time and bring back the dead. His great struggle, in a city ever alight with its own energy and beseiged by unprecedented winters, is one of the most beautiful and extraordinary stories of American literature.