Virginia Evans’ The Correspondent is headed to the big screen, with Jane Fonda attached to star, Deadline reports.
Evans’ novel, published last May by Crown, follows Sybil Van Antwerp, an irascible retired woman in her 70s who writes daily letters to a variety of people. After receiving correspondence from a figure in her past, she’s forced to come to terms with a painful period in her life. A critic for Kirkus called the novel “an affecting portrait of a prickly woman.”
The book became a word-of-mouth New York Times No. 1 bestseller and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Andrew Carnegie Medal, and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Earlier this week, it won the 2026 PEN/Hemingway Award, given to an outstanding debut novel.
The planned adaptation was the subject of a bidding war won by the Lionsgate studio.
Fonda, the Academy Award–winning star of films including Klute, Coming Home, On Golden Pond, and 9 to 5, will act in the film and serve as a producer. Cat Vasko will write the script, and Evans will be among the movie’s executive producers.
Todd Lieberman, a producer of the adaptation, told Deadline, “This book is a phenomenon. To be invited in alongside the legend Jane Fonda, with my Lionsgate partners and Cat, is a thrilling honor—and we all can’t wait to have moviegoers experience the same catharsis that so many book readers already have.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
