Graeme Simsion's "The Rosie Project"

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Graeme Simsion is a former IT consultant with an international reputation. His screen adaptation of The Rosie Project won the Australian Writers Guild/Inscription Award for Best Romantic Comedy Script. Simsion lives in Australia with his wife, Anne, and their two children, and is currently working on a sequel to The Rosie Project.

Here he dreamcasts an adaptation of The Rosie Project:

A big caveat here: I originally wrote The Rosie Project as a screenplay, and Sony Pictures have optioned it. If they go ahead, they’ll doubtless engage a professional casting director, who (experience tells me) will do a much better job than I would. I’ve made a bunch of short films, and have been amazed by what inspired casting can do. Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. Who’d have thought it? Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Jack Nicholson in As Good as it Gets (OK, that one feels like a natural, but perhaps only in retrospect.) The Rosie Project takes us into not dissimilar territory. And, of course, anything I say here does not reflect the views of Sony Pictures, its agents, etc, etc.

That said, rather than second-guess Sony’s choices, I’ve cast my mind back to when I expected that if the movie was made, it would be in my home country of Australia, and imagined an all-Australian cast.

How about:

Eric Bana as Don. He’s known internationally for dramatic / action roles but he started off in comedy.

Melissa George as Rosie. Loved her in In Treatment.

Anthony LaPaglia as Gene. My wife assures me he has the “bedroom eyes” necessary for the role.

Toni Collette as Claudia – great comedy credentials as well as the heart to be the moral center.

Cate Blanchett as the Dean. Because I can.

Learn more about the book and author at Graeme Simsion's website and Twitter perch.

--Marshal Zeringue