What to expect about the adaptation of The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo

By: Ana Helena Barboza

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, written by Taylor Jenkins Reid follows the story of a young journalist known as Monique Grant (who is at the beginning of her career). The tale itself starts when Evelyn Hugo, a renowned and secluded Hollywood actress, famous from the 50s through the 80s, comes across Vivant, the magazine that Monique works with. As the announcement that the ex-Hollywood star would donate her most famous dresses to a charity is spread, she states that she is willing to have a final interview, but she would only do that with Monique. Once she actually gets to talk to Evelyn, she finds out the authentic motive behind the interview. She wants someone who would tell her real story, someone who is eager to write the story of her life, no lies nor secrets, just the truth about her past and why she got married seven times. Most importantly, Evelyn wanted to tell the world who the real love of her life was, and she wanted to do that word by word, exactly how the story happened.

The story not only talks about her life, but it can also be viewed as a journey through self-acceptance and a fight for human rights, people can relate to her character as she wants her truth to be told, (no matter how arduous it might be). It may be quite simple to see ourselves through her, as we get to see how she grows as a person.

As the story progresses, we learn Evelyn’s true story, narrated by herself which makes the book to be a lot more amusing as the readers obtain the capability of following the story by two narrators, Monique and Evelyn, whotell the story in the 1st person point of view. In March 2022, the online platform: Netflix, announced that the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo would be adapted into a movie depicting the story told by the book. Whereas a few of the fans were quite excited in regard to the movie, others continue to believe that the novel should be compelled to a seven-episode long series, narrating each of the husbands per episode. The adaptation would be originally made by HBO Max until Netflix bought the project.

What is known about the movie adaptation:

As discussed upon the fans, they believe that the literary adaptations made by Netflix do not stick to the original plot of the story as Netflix has a tendency to not only cast people who are much older than the characters (which tends to sometimes ruin the overall imagination of the character) but also to adapt the story into something completely different. A few titles such as Rebecca, The women in the window, A wrinkle in time and The girl in the train are known for being adaptations that are not nearly as grand as the books. Although the movie is still not in production, several fans are beginning to fan cast the actors (who the fans would think would benefit as actors to the plot of the story), the main issue regarding that is that when a fandom begins to fancast a movie, that not only leads to hatred towards the actual cast but also disappointment on the movie itself.

The movie was announced and began to be discussed in March 2022, and up until now, neither the casting nor the production of the movie started. It is being developed by Liz Tigelaar as she began writing the screenplay last year in March. Although filming did not begin, Taylor Jenkins Reid is one of the executive producers along with Margeret Chernin. The actress that is the most believed to play the main character, Evelyn Hugo, is Ana de Armas who starred in Blonde (the Netflix adaptation of Marilyn Monroe’s life), they believe that her acting is overall phenomenal and that she has what it takes to play a Hollywood star due to the fact that she portrayed Marilyn Monroe as well as she did. There is no release date nor production date for the film, which is also making the fans question the authenticity of Netflix to actually make the movie happen as it is not the first time that rumours of the Seven Husbands being produced have arisen,. Since it is known that Taylor Jenkins Reid is also involved (as she announced it herself) fans are not as apprehensive about it, although they are reluctant that their favorite Hollywood star might be affected.