Josh Duhamel Takes Nicholas Sparks Adaptation 'Safe Haven'

Keira Knightley may play female lead in the Lasse Hallstrom directed adaptation.

Josh Duhamel is jumping on the Nicholas Sparks film adaptation gravy train, one that has proved to be extremely fruitful in producing successful footnotes in the careers of young Hollywood leading men; Ryan Gosling ("The Notebook"), Channing Tatum ("Dear John") and Zac Efron ("The Last Song", "The Lucky One"). Female audiences are lapping up these tales of anguished romances and we are hitting almost an adaptation once every year at this point. Relativity Media have cast the "Transformers" supporting actor in the latest, "Safe Haven", a romance drama about a young North Carolina gal who is determined to avoid forming personal ties but stumbles into a relationship with a widowed store owner Dad of two. She falls hopelessly in love but is tormented by a dark secret from the past that still haunts her. Duhamel has the Dad role, whilst the female lead has yet to be cast. Keira Knightley at one point was in early talks for the movie but if she is going to do it she will need to commit soon as Relativity have set a Feb 8th, 2013 release date on the movie with production to start soon. The reason for the rush into production is the success of "The Lucky One" that brought in an impressive $22.5 million on its debut opening this past weekend and Relativity will be hoping for a similar success here. Though we must say Duhamel, a vanilla leading man if ever we saw one, hasn't got the pulling power of a Zac Efron which may be crucial here, even if they do land the significant coup of Knightley. Lasse Hallstrom, who has already directed his own Sparks adaptation with "Dear John", is back for another roll of the dice. That 2010 romance movie earned over $100 million at the worldwide box office on a budget of just $25 million so we are sure Hallstrom was paid well last time and that's why he is back here again. He recently directed "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" and is becoming the go-to book guy right now. source - variety
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Matt Holmes is the co-founder of What Culture, formerly known as Obsessed With Film. He has been blogging about pop culture and entertainment since 2006 and has written over 10,000 articles.