Pierce Brosnan to star in the film version of a forgotten Ernest Hemingway novel

Pierce Brosnan will bring a little-known Ernest Hemingway novel to the screen, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Hemingway’s “Across the River and Into the Trees” was published in 1950 and remains one of his least-known books. It tells the story of Col. Richard Cantwell, an American soldier in Italy who has been diagnosed with terminal heart disease, and his romantic encounter with an 18-year-old Italian woman.

It was released in 1950 to mostly negative reviews, although Tennesse Williams liked the book. In a New York Times review, the playwright wrote, “It is the saddest novel in the world about the saddest city, and when I say I think it is the best and most honest work that Hemingway has done, you may think me crazy. It will probably be a popular book. The critics may treat it pretty roughly.”

Two years later Hemingway followed “Across the River and Into the Trees” with “The Old Man and the Sea,” which was embraced by critics and readers and preceded his being awarded the Nobel Prize.

For “Across the River and Into the Trees,” Brosnan will work with Martin Campbell, the director of “Casino Royale,” “Green Lantern” and, of course, “GoldenEye,” the Bond picture that starred Brosnan.

The screenplay for the adaptation was written by film director Michael Radford and British playwright Peter Flannery. “Across the River and Into the Trees” will be the first Hemingway film adaptation since the 2008 film “The Garden of Eden,” based on Hemingway’s incomplete, posthumously published novel, which starred Mena Suvari and Jack Huston.