E! Online reports that writer/director Tyler Perry has taken a role in the upcoming adaptation of Susannah Cahalan’s memoir, Brain on Fire, where he will play a newspaper editor. The film is produced by Broad Green Pictures, Foundation Features and Charlize Theron’s company Denver & Delilah.
Perry joins a cast that includes Chloe Grace Moretz in the lead role in addition to Thomas Mann (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), Jenny Slate (Obvious Child), Richard Armitage (“The Hobbit”) and Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix). Production is currently underway for the film which is eyeing a 2016 debut.
The book, “Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness” was published in 2012. On her official site, Cahalan describes it as follows:
One day, I woke up in a strange hospital room, strapped to my bed, under guard, and unable to move or speak. My medical recordsfrom a month-long hospital stay of which I have no memoryshowed psychosis, violence, and dangerous instability. Yet, only weeks earlier I had been a healthy twenty-four year old, six months into my first serious relationship and beginning a career as a cub reporter at the New York Post.
My memoir Brain on Fire chronicles the swift path of my illness and the lucky, last-minute intervention led by one of the few doctors capable of saving my life. As weeks ticked by and I moved inexplicably from violence to catatonia, $1 million worth of blood tests and brain scans revealed nothing. The exhausted doctors were ready to commit me to the psychiatric ward, in effect condemning me to a lifetime of institutions, or death, until Dr. Souhel Najjar nicknamed Dr. House joined my team. He asked me to draw one simple sketch, which became key to diagnosing me with a newly discovered autoimmune disease in which my body was attacking my brain, an illness now thought to be the cause of demonic possessions throughout history.
Theron is producing Brain on Fire alongside AJ Dix and Beth Kono.
