Tom Blyth says hello to A Farewell To Arms
The recent Hunger Games actor will star in a new adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway book
Get hyped, Ernest Hemingway fans: The storied author’s breakout 1929 novel A Farewell To Arms is getting another movie adaptation—its first in nearly 70 years, but its third altogether. So we’re overdue to say farewell to some more arms. We’ve had two A Star Is Borns since then!
According to Variety, this latest adaptation will be led by recent Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes star Tom Blyth. He’ll be playing Frederic Henry, an American who joins the Italian army’s ambulance corps in World War I and falls in love with a nurse after he gets injured—while he develops some misgivings about war in general. The book is inspired by Hemingway’s own time as an ambulance driver in Italy during World War I, and Variety says the author’s estate is working with writer/director Michael Winterbottom (of the The Trip franchise).
Representatives for the estate said that Hemingway’s family is “thrilled” to see his book “reimagined for a new age,” adding that “it’s hard to think of a better moment” for it given the “chaotic state of the world.” Blyth, meanwhile, called it a “dream project,” saying he’s a fan of both Hemingway’s work and Winterbottom’s filmmaking, adding that Winterbottom’s script adapts the book “perfectly” and “captures all of the author’s unique nuance and precision.”
Previous adaptations of A Farewell To Arms came out in 1932 and 1957, along with a TV miniseries in 1966. Also, it only sort of counts, but there was the 1996 movie In Love And War, which was a poorly received, fictionalized version of Hemingway’s real experience in World War I (starring Chris O’Donnell as the man himself) that aligned it more with the events of the book.