Sony Pictures Entertainment has optioned film rights to David Baldacci’s upcoming fantasy novel The Finisher. The deal was negotiated by Columbia Pictures production president Hannah Minghella and production vice president Lauren Abrahams, with Aaron Priest of The Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency and Lucy Stille at Paradigm.

Matthew Tolmach (who produced last year’s The Amazing Spider-Man) is set to produce the movie.

In the book, fourteen-year-old Vega Jane lives in the village of Wormwood, where life is nasty, brutish and short. Villagers have been told that there is nothing outside of Wormwood except for the Quag, a foul forest filled with terrifying beasts. No one comes, no one goes, and Wormwood has stayed this way for generations— until Vega’s mentor Quentin Herms disappears. Quentin leaves Vega a secret message hinting that there’s a way out of Wormwood, and something extraordinary on the other side. As Vega begins to investigate, she realizes that Wormwood is a village built on dangerous lies. And that powerful people are willing to kill in order to keep it that way. Soon Vega is careening down a path that will either lead straight to the truth… or straight to an early grave.

Scholastic is planning to publish the book in March.

Related articles previously published on SFScope:
Scholastic acquires fantasy novel for children by David Baldacci (12 August 2013)