Walter Salles, Motorcycle Diaries Director, to Adapt The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao for the Big Screen

Junot Diaz's Pulitzer Prize winning book will hit the silver screen soon!

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As Latina.Com was the first to report back in March, Brazilian Walter Salles, acclaimed director of The Motorcycle Diaries and Central Station is reportedly going to direct an adaptation of Junot Diaz's Pulitzer prize winning tome The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. It seems that the wheels for the production of the film have finally been set in motion, as confirmed by Variety recently.

In case you've been living under a rock and have never heard of the book, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao follows the protagonist Oscar, an overweight, sci-fi obsessed Dominican nerd living in New Jersey as he searches for love and tries to find his place in the world. Puerto Rican writer Jose Rivera will be tackling the daunting task of adapting the complex novel into screenplay format, as he previously did when working with Walter Salles to adapt The Motorcycle Diaries. We're dying to see how Rivera will take on the lengthy footnotes Diaz included in the novel, which explain many key aspects of Dominican history and the origins of the superstition and beliefs the narrative of Oscar Wao is built around.

Diaz was reportedly informed by Miramax via a not-so-secret email that they had contracted Salles and Rivera to head up the efforts a few weeks ago. When Miramax first bought the rights to the script the writer seemed to not want to get his hopes up saying, "Miramax bought the option but that doesn’t necessarily mean that anything is going to be made. It might actually happen, but it’s just one of those things where you cross your fingers and hope." No need to keep those fingers crossed any longer Junot, looks like Oscar Wao is about to be bigger than life. Tell us: who do you think should play Oscar Wao in the movie?

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