In November 2011, Cheryl Strayed’s memoir “Wild” was months away from arriving on bookstore shelves and entering best-seller lists the first week of its release. But for movie producers, the book was already a hot property.
Bill Pohlad, the Minneapolis producer behind such prestige films as “12 Years a Slave” and “Brokeback Mountain,” was definitely in the market. Though he passes on plenty of pitches each year from established filmmakers, the publisher’s galley of the new book struck a nerve. Strayed’s riveting story told of hiking through deep wilderness in her 20s to explore the inner country of her soul. In 2007 he funded a wilderness film with similar themes and panoramas, the Sean Penn-directed “Into the Wild.”
“You can’t miss the parallels,” Pohlad said. “It has a good heart in it, that’s the most important for me.” It struck him as the kind of project he aims for. “Without sounding too high and mighty, we kind of like films that are going to mean something 20 and 40 years from now.”
Strayed had a different aim. She sent a galley to Reese Witherspoon, a respected producer as well as actress.
“I did think it was an extraordinary role for an actress,” Strayed said. “She was the first and only person I sent it to. Within the first 72 hours I sent it she had read it and called me.”
Witherspoon, who also co-produced this year’s drama “Gone Girl,” spent an hour talking to Strayed about her film ideas. Hollywood is not overflowing with projects for 30-plus women, and Witherspoon told Strayed “she really wanted to play the role and wanted to option the book.”
“I’m from northern Minnesota, where there’s no pretension. What you see’s what you get,” said Strayed. “I was looking for that in an actress, too. Reese was quite an authentic person. She didn’t believe her movie-star press. This real, hard-working person, I sensed that I would like her and identify with her. I was right about that. She’s as real as it gets.”
Pohlad knew there was a bidding war looming, so he contacted Witherspoon’s producing partner, Bruna Papandrea, a longtime acquaintance. “We said, ‘Let’s do this together,’ ” he said. “It’s really just a friendly thing. It was a great fit.” They discussed which screenwriters might best deliver their “takes on the book, how it might be approached. Reese was very excited about Nick Hornby (‘About a Boy’) and it was a great choice, it went on very smoothly.”
It went smoothly for Strayed, too, despite having her autobiography condensed. Some episodes are treated gently. The scene of killing her mother’s horse “is much more graphic and brutal and harsh in the book,” she said. Other incidents needed getting used to.
“When Nick Hornby wrote that adaptation, he got rid of my stepfather, my sister, my family structure,” she said, “… But overall it feels very true to life.”