A Chinese Jane Eyre

It looks like plans are afoot to film a Chinese Jane Eyre. According to BBC News,

A Chinese film version of the novel Jane Eyre could be shot in both China and the Brontës' home in West Yorkshire.
Bradford City of Film said the project could be shot in Qingdao, China and around Haworth's Brontë Parsonage.
Charlotte Brontë's book has been popular in China since an abridged copy was published in Shanghai in 1925.
The film organisation's David Wilson said there was "a long-held Chinese love affair with the story".
Mr Wilson, director of Bradford UNESCO City of Film, said the film project was in its early stages but "could be the start of something" and "a fantastic opportunity with huge tourism benefits". [...]
The production would be a contemporary retelling of the story for a Chinese audience but could include some scenes filmed in West Yorkshire because the landscape was such an important part of the book, Mr Wilson said.
There has been no discussion of the casting yet but it is expected Chinese and British writers would work on the development of the script. [...]
Lauren Livesey, of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, said: "Books by the Brontë sisters came out 150 years ago and it is difficult to imagine now but they were really pushing the envelope, quite shocking and radical.
"But now they've become quite 'chocolate-boxy' so it is really important we get these contemporary retellings."
The themes of independence and female emancipation were "always going to find an audience", she added.

The Telegraph and Argus has the story too:

This year is the 10th anniversary of Bradford becoming the world’s first UNESCO City of Film. Tonight, at a Science Museum event in London, Bradford City of Film director David Wilson will reveal how the team, and the Brontë Parsonage Museum, have been working with Chinese film producers on turning Jane Eyre into a “contemporary script for a modern global audience”.
Mr Wilson, who last year took Chinese film-makers to the Parsonage Museum and Haworth, said it is hoped the film will be shot in Qingdao, China, and the Bradford district, taking in Brontë landmarks. He said the project reflects China’s fascination with the Brontës and the growing relationship between British and Chinese film.
“Jane Eyre is hugely popular in China, ever since an abridged version published in 1925 in Shanghai,” said Mr Wilson. “Since Jane Eyre’s arrival in China almost 100 years ago there have been many readings of the complex novel - from feminist manifesto to a history of colonialism - and numerous adaptations in books, operas, plays and films. The novel is a staple text in China’s schools.
The 1970 TV adaptation of Jane Eyre, starring Susannah York and George C Scott, was dubbed into Chinese but not screened there until 1979 when it was an instant hit with audiences and the Press. Mr Wilson said: “The huge enthusiasm from producers in talks with Bradford City of Film suggests that the market is ripe for another re-telling of the story in a very contemporary way.”
He added: “We are so fortunate to have such a rich literary heritage on our doorstep. Jane Eyre is a Chinese as well as an English heroine, and this project reflects that. The making of a film like this would benefit our district in so many ways, shining a spotlight on the city and moorland locations and attracting the growing phenomenon of screen tourism.” (Emma Clayton)

International and local sites report it too: 105 Capital FM, News 24 (France), Mietspiegel (Germany).

Yet another mention of Brontë works in a discussion of the TV show You, this time on BitchMedia.

Pop culture is littered with many variations of the messed-up man whose dark past somehow makes him deserving of a lovely girlfriend. Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights’ Byronic hero, is quite the entrepreneur of male personality, parlaying his difficult childhood and behavioral problems into a roaringly successful romantic strategy–if his dominant progeny can be considered proof. [...]
Both children experience trauma, but only one child grows up to inflict it. That is a practice of boundary enforcement, not an accident of science or a product of biology. Witnessing domestic violence doesn’t activate an “abuser gene” in young boys, but it does socialize them into a culture where men displace their trauma on others. And unfortunately, abused children who become abusers can find their experiences normalized in pop culture, whether it’s a massively popular character like Christopher Nolan’s Batman—who responds to his parents’ murder by beating up people and being an all-around crappy boyfriend—or the classic literature assigned in high school, where brooding, troubled, and controlling men like Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester always win the object of their affections. (Nooreen Reza)

Book Riot recommends ten books for fans of the Canadian sitcom Kim’s Convenience, including

Re Jane by Patricia Park
This novel is a re-imagining of Jane Eyre with a 21st century Korean American heroine. Here, Jane is an orphan who toils, unappreciated, in her strict uncle’s grocery store. Desperate for a new life, she’s thrilled to become the au pair for two Brooklyn English professors. When a family death interrupts Jane and Ed’s blossoming affair, she flies off to Seoul, leaving New York far behind. (Ann Foster)

La Vanguardia (Spain) features the new book La co­cinera de Castamar by Fernando J. Múñez, described as an Upstairs, Downstairs in the court of Philip V of Spain.

La obra también incorpora elementos y ecos de clásicos como Las amistades peligrosas, Orgullo y prejuicio y otras piezas de Jane Austen o las hermanas Brontë... Sólo que a la castellana y con el contexto de la postguerra de la guerra de Su­cesión entre Habsburgo y Bor­bones. (Fernando García) (Translation)

Libertad Digital (Spain) comments much the same thing about it.

Vanity Fair has Anjelica Huston answer the so-called Proust Questionnaire.

Who are your favorite writers? Shakespeare, Flaubert, Turgenev, Colette, Edith Wharton, Elizabeth Bowen, Dawn Powell, Henry James, Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, Jane Austen, Larry McMurtry, Yukio Mishima, and Charlotte Brontë.
Who are your favorite heroes of fiction? Scarlett O'Hara, Lily Bart, Jo March, Mary Poppins, Alice in Wonderland, Bertie Wooster, and Jane Eyre.

Elle (India) interviews writer Tania James.

ELLE: Who are the writers who inspire you?
TJ: Charlotte Brontë and Toni Morrison. (Neville Bhandara)

Uproxx discusses whether it's right or even possible to judge a film as if you have seen it from what you've heard/read about it.

Is thinkperiencing lazy? I don’t think a judgmental word like lazy should apply to anyone trying to keep their head above water during the desperate final throes of late capitalism. I prefer “practical.” It’s lazy when a high school junior reads the CliffsNotes of Jane Eyre instead of toughing it out through Charlotte Brontë’s 172-year-old classic. It’s practical for me to decide that watching all 192 hours of the MAGA Teen confrontation in order to get “the full story” is not good self-care. (Steven Hyden)

Folk Radio reviews The Unthanks' trilogy Lines, which includes their take on Emily Brontë's poetry.

Part Three of the trilogy is the most intimate segment of the trilogy. It consists of a collection of ten poems by Emily Brontë which have been turned into song by Adrian McNally. Commissioned by the Brontë Society to mark Emily’s 200th birthday, Adrian composed these settings on Emily’s original piano (a rare example of a 5-octave cabinet piano probably made in London between 1810 and 1815), in The Parsonage at Haworth where she grew up. Since the Brontë Parsonage is now a working museum, the recording as well as the writing all had to take place after nightfall, and the intimate ambience of this quiet and atmospheric time is entirely apt for the intimate nature of Emily’s poetry, which in the main reveals and explores the poet’s oneness with, and responses to, nature, albeit with an unexpectedly acute perception of mortality for someone of her tender years (it is believed Deep Deep Down In The Silent Grave was written before her first collection was published). This Brontë song cycle is where the trilogy comes closest to the classical model (in approximating the concept of a Liederkreis, and in being performed by just Rachel and Becky with only Adrian’s piano for accompaniment).
Although Emily’s poetry has been overshadowed by the towering tormented passions of Wuthering Heights, her only novel, it has nevertheless more recently been reassessed in the light of its simplicity of expression and ability to convey concisely a spectrum of emotion. This song cycle gives the feeling of a journey through moods and emotions as reflected in the landscape – not exactly a Winterreise, but you get the drift. It opens with the breezy, softly animated High Waving Heather, which employs a minimalist repeated note pattern that mirrors Rachel and Becky’s parallel harmonies – although the stormier element of the climate may be a touch underplayed in this setting. She Dried Her Tears And They Did Smile shyly combines elegance with a shy diffidence. The unique ambience for the arpeggio-driven The Night Is Darkening Round Me is conjured by a clock chiming midnight. The longest of the settings (clocking in at seven minutes) is that of Lines (The soft unclouded blue of air), where Emily attempts to convey something of the character of her disgraced brother Branwell.
The most powerful poem in the sequence, though, is Remembrance, whose lament for lost love is set to a brisk funeral march rhythm. The sounds of cawing crows and the tread of heavy footsteps enable the mood of mourning to continue on to the plangent O Evening Why, and this pair of settings contains some of the finest performances of the sequence from Rachel and Becky, unerringly steered and underpinned by Adrian’s authoritative piano work. Against these, I’m Happiest When Most Away feels almost devil-may-care in its emotional response. There’s one more Brontë setting to consider, What Use Is It To Slumber Here?, which is available (only as a digital download) only to purchasers of the full trilogy direct from the Unthanks’ website. This would, I suggest, work best paired with O Evening Why in the sequence, for its questing mood is close. (David Kidman)

Rachel Sutcliffe reviews Diane M Denton’s Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit. The Sisters' Room has a post on Charlotte Brontë and Charles Dickens. The Brontë Parsonage Blog tells about Sarah Fermi's funeral and the eulogy delivered there in her honour by Patsy Stoneman.