A Brontë Biopic for 2016?

The Telegraph & Argus reports the announcement by Clothworkers Films that they are preparing a biopic about the Brontës for 2016. The film will be directed and written (?) by David Anthony Thomas. They have promised more information in the coming weeks on their Twitter and Facebook accounts:

A big-budget movie about Haworth’s legendary literary sisters is in the pipeline, it has been revealed.
Yorkshire-based Clothworkers Films has announced it is planning a blockbuster biopic about the Brontë siblings – Charlotte, Emily and Anne.
The cinema production company, which specialises in period drama, said the film would be the world’s first English-language project of its kind.
More information, including details of an A-list cast and crew, will be unveiled on April 21, 2016 – the 200th anniversary of Charlotte’s birth date.
News of the pending production has created a frenzy on Twitter, where the company said it was gaining about 150 new followers a day. (...)
Previous productions have included the Three Sisters of the Moors in 1944, directed by John Larkin and starring Cedric Hardwicke, Molly Lamont and Lynne Roberts.
And in 1973, Yorkshire Television produced a hugely-acclaimed series – The Brontës of Haworth – which was lauded for its accurate portrayal of the family’s lives. (...)
“New productions about the Brontes are brilliant for us,” said Mrs [Ann] Dinsdal, [collections manager at the Brontë Parsonage Museum].
“We had our highest ever visitor figure – 220,000 – in the year that The Brontës of Haworth was screened.
“Invariably we see increased interest and although I don’t know a great deal about the latest planned film, I am sure it will have a similar effect.”

It should be clarified though that Three Sisters of the Moors was a promotional short film made by Twentieth-Century Fox to create momentum for the forthcoming release of Jane Eyre 1944. The only English-spoken briographical (or sort of) feature film about the Brontës is Devotion 1946 (Warner Bros). The most reputed version, however, is André Téchiné's film Les Soeurs Brontë 1979.

Jane, Le Renard et Moi has been awarded with several big awards at the Joe Shuster Awards (the Canadian Comics Awards):

Best Artist / Dessinateur
Isabelle Arsenault - Jane, le renard & moi (La Pastèque) / Jane, The Fox and Me (Groundwood Books)

Best Writer / Scénariste
Fanny Britt - Jane, le renard & moi (La Pastèque) / Jane, The Fox and Me (Groundwood Books)

(Via Radio Canada)

As we have reported, Bridget Christie's A Bic For Her won the Foster's Comedy Award for best act at the Edinburgh Fringe:

She writhes ludicrously on stage under the weight of a normal ballpoint pen and imagines a conversation between the Brontë sisters in which they bemoan the challenges of writing with a "male" pen. (Stephen Eisenhammer on Reuters)

Her rage is then turned on ballpoint pens designed for a woman's hand, a Bic for Her, by re-imagining the Brontë sisters flummoxed at their inability to write with their masculine pens[.] (Jennifer McKiernan in The Skinny)

BBC History Magazine lists the Brontë Parsonage Museum as 'Undiscovered Museum':

Haworth Parsonage, once home to Yorkshire's famous Brontë sisters, is now a top UK tourist attraction. Newly refurbished for 2013 with an exciting £60,000 decorative scheme, the Museum has never offered a more powerful experience of the famous authors of Jane Eyre (Charlotte), Wuthering Heights (Emily) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne).

The Parsonage is sometimes at the centre of curious initiatives.The Telegraph & Argus reports:

Keighley Buddhists walked across Brontë Country to raise money to feed the hungry.
Members of Keighley Interbeing, a meditation group, raised money for international aid charity Buddhist Global Relief.
The charity works to relieve hunger by supporting grassroots solutions and empowering girls and women through educational sponsorship. The walk on Saturday crossed the moors to Hebden Bridge from the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth.

A last word on pen names in The Hindu:

Pseudonyms have been used by authors for different reasons. The Brontë sisters published their famous works under male pen names- Ellis (Emily), Currer (Charlotte) and Acton (Anne) Bell- as women writers were not taken seriously in Victorian England. (Arundhati Hazra)

Dysfunctional book couples in The Huffington Post:

Heathcliffe (sic) + Catherine ("Wuthering Heights")
Mr. Rochester +Antoinette ("Wide Sargasso Sea")
"Wide Sargasso Sea" gives us a very different perspective of the crazy woman in the attic that tries to set Mr. Rochester on fire. It makes Rochester seem like a heartless man, and Antoinette seem like a girl who wants to make it work but is, unfortunately, a little unhinged. Rochester ends up married to another and Antoinette ends up dead.

Lizzie Porter writes in The Times about her problems with anorexia. It contains a brief Brontë reference:

As other girls were losing their virginity aged 16 or 17, I was completing a gym session of frantically scribbling away about Wuthering Heights (obsessive working is an obvious complement to the sequestration you get from starving). 

ofeminin (Poland) has a curious way to promote The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks:

"Wichrowe wzgórza", "Duma i Uprzedzenie" oraz "Jane Eyre" są już dawno za wami? Zatem, podpowiadamy na jakie książki o miłości warto zwrócić uwagę. (Translation)

Entomology of a Bookworm gives details and dates for their Septemb-Eyre readalong; news from the Parsonage Twitter: the visit of the Japanese Brontë Society, the baby bonnet made by Margaret Wooler for Charlotte Brontë and the hair bracelet (from Anne) which Charlotte gave to Ellen Nussey.