Counting By 7’s: Still Waiting for the Movie

I’ll admit it. I love Quvenzhané Wallis in just about every movie she has been in. I loved Beasts of the Southern Wild more than I can say. I saw Annie TWICE in theaters. I read Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet so I could go see the movie. I have loved watching this kid act since she was tiny, and when I heard it had been announced that she had been cast in Counting by 7’s, I knew I had to read the book before the movie came out.

I listened to the book through my library’s audiobook app, and I have to say that Counting By 7’s is really fantastic middle grade fiction. I could not even fathom how good it was. I try to remember what books I read in 7^th grade, and it all blurs together in a sea of class assigned fiction, historical fiction about a variety of princesses, biographies about presidents and so on. I read a lot, but I can’t remember what I read.

I think I would have remembered something like this. The book is really good, and chronicles the story of a young adopted girl, the friends she finds in an older set of siblings, and what it means to be a family and take care of one another. The story is heartbreaking and warming, and has a lovely, unique cast that is just too good to not get a movie.

Having heard the news that this would be Wallis’s next project, I went to check on the project details on IMDB. Nothing. I googled. Nothing.

Movies stop being in production, or end production, or don’t get off the ground for a number of reasons. Funding was pulled for bigger projects, there were problems with the contract, the movie was projected to do poorly, whatever.

What might be the problem here is that while the book is middle grade, the movie might need to be rated for a higher age bracket, which would mean parents wouldn’t want their kids to see it. The movie wouldn’t have a defined audience, which can hurt a film.

For whatever reason Counting By 7’s is in delayed production, I hope it gets going soon. Because this role was made for Quvenzhané Wallis, and I want to see this book on the big screen. It’s rare that I get excited about movie adaptations of books, but with this one, I hope it happens.