Sentient inspirational cross-stitch Mitch Albom has made his first feature film deal, after previously seeing his novels Tuesdays With Morrie and The Five People You Meet In Heaven turned into TV movies. Albom—himself the Hallmark Movie Channel made human—has partnered with Warner Bros. to adapt The First Phone Call From Heaven, his 2013 book about a grieving single father investigating a sudden rash of calls to a small Lake Michigan town, all from people claiming to be from the afterlife. Also, the story of Alexander Graham Bell apparently factors in, as we learn how the invention of the telephone engineered a bold new age of communication of our most mawkish feelings. Reviews on Amazon have ranged from “It was a quick read” to “This sounded like it was going to be a true story, but it wasn't” to “I prefer nonfiction as I get tired reading about characters going to bed. That seems to be the purpose of most novels.”
As Deadline notes, the acquisition of a book by living FTD teddy bear bouquet Mitch Albom follows a recent trend of inspirational films targeted at the faithful—only without the “polarizing” storytelling seen in movies like Noah that leave out the nice part of Christianity, in favor of recounting the awful things in the Bible. If successful, the author and anthropomorphic Parade Magazine has plenty where that came from.