Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Summit Entertainment has acquired world rights to The Night Circus, a first novel by Erin Morgenstern that will be published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group in September. The book is the story of two young prodigy illusionists in the 19th Century who are groomed to battle out their fathers’ age-old rivalry in an enchanted circus created just for their competition. They complicate matters when the young man and woman  fall in love.

The book was a much-buzzed about title at the 2010 Frankfurt Book Fair. Summit president of production Erik Feig chased it hard, and came away with the rights after a persuasive meeting with lit agent Richard Pine, who  had planned to hold meetings with all studios after the holiday. Those meetings were canceled while Pine ‘s Inkwell Management and UTA made a deal that covers both movie and TV rights. The aspiration is to make a film first, and then possibly consider TV options. Pine will be exec producer, and Feig will oversee development with exec Jeyun Choi for Summit.

“The Night Circus sets a spell on the reader from its very first page and we cannot wait to find the right filmmaker and cast to make the world come as inordinately alive as it does in the mind’s eye,” Feig said in a statement.