Lifetime Greenlights New Original Movie Based on Bestselling Novel

LOS ANGELES, August 23: Lifetime
has ordered production on The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, a new original movie based on the best-selling
novel of the same name by Kim Edwards, for premiere in 2008.

Emmy-nominated director
Mick Jackson (Live from Baghdad,
Tuesdays with Morrie) has
signed on to helm the new project, and casting is currently underway.

The novel has five million
copies in print and has spent 60 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, holding the number-one spot for
seven weeks. In The Memory Keeper's Daughter, a secret shapes the lives of two families over a
quarter of a century, beginning in 1964. During a paralyzing winter storm, Dr.
David Henry is forced to deliver his own twin babies. With his wife Norah under
heavy sedation, he welcomes a healthy son, Paul, and a daughter, Phoebe, who
has Down's syndrome. Hoping to spare his wife any heartache for having to care
for a special-needs child, David tells Norah their daughter died at birth and
orders the nurse, Caroline, to place Phoebe in an institution. However, unable
to abandon the newborn, the nurse secretly decides to raise Phoebe as her own
in another city.

Other books previously
adapted into movies by Lifetime include four titles from Nora Roberts including
Nora Roberts' Angels Fall with
Heather Locklear and Nora Roberts' Montana Sky with John Corbett, Jodi Picoult's The Pact and Plain Truth, Joyce
Carol Oates' We Were the Mulvaneys,
Luanne Rice's Beach Girls and
Sue Monk Kidd's The Mermaid Chair.
The Memory Keeper's Daughter
will be produced by Jaffe/Braunstein Films for Lifetime Television. Howard
Braunstein and Michael Jaffe (Lifetime's Odd Girl Out, Elvis)
serve as executive producers. John Pielmeier (Hitler: The Rise of Evil) wrote the teleplay, to be directed by Jackson.

“The enormous popularity
of The Memory Keeper's Daughter
has been phenomenal and we're proud to bring this story to life for fans of the
book,” said Susanne Daniels, the president of entertainment at Lifetime
Networks. “We're also thrilled to be working with Mick Jackson, an incredibly
respected top director who will lend a keen eye and create what will surely be
an ‘event’ for Lifetime and our viewers.”