Film to be made of Coelho's 'The Alchemist'

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2008

CANNES, France (AFP) — International best-seller "The Alchemist" by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho is to be made into a film, with "The Matrix" star Laurence Fishburne directing.

Film mogul Harvey Weinstein on Sunday announced the screen adaptation of the novel, written 20 years ago and translated into 56 languages, with more than 65 million copies sold.

Work on the 38.5-million-euro (60-million-dollar) project, in which Fishburne will also star, is scheduled to begin probably later this year.

Coelho said in a statement released by Weinstein at the Cannes film festival that he was "very happy that my book will be filmed in the way I intended it to be".

In the book, young Andalusian shepherd boy Santiago leaves his native Spain to travel to Egypt after...