Beautiful Boy Addiction Memoir to be Adapted into Feature Film

Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction, a memoir by David Sheff, is set to be adapted on film for Amazon Studios, with a tentative 2018 release date.

David Sheff, a journalist, wrote Beautiful Boy as a reflection upon his son Nic’s methamphetamine addiction. Nic’s own work, entitled Tweak, provides a firsthand account of his experiences with addiction and recovery.

David later authored Clean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America’s Greatest Tragedy as a follow-up to the highly successful Beautiful Boy. Both works examine the intricacies of addiction, and the familial associations of the disease—the former effort reveals the many questions that a parent of an addicted child must face.

“How can both Nics, the loving and considerate and generous one, and the self-obsessed and self-destructive one, be the same person?” wondered David in Beautiful Boy.

As he comes to terms with his son’s disease throughout the memoir, he very aptly describes the feelings of many struggling parents. “We deny the severity of our loved one’s problem not because we are naive, but because we can’t know,” he wrote.

Nic’s book, which followed his father’s, offers a different perspective on the disease entirely. While Beautiful Boy will be the first to appear on the screen, film rights were also purchased for Tweak.

The father-son duo’s respective works were critically hailed upon release, and have remained at the forefront of addiction memoir discussion in the near-decade that has followed. A fascinating portrait of addiction and the ways in which one family can be affected by its power, the pair of texts will certainly allow for a gripping story to be told on film.

Nic’s addiction to methamphetamines resulted in an intense relapse over one fateful summer. Both Nic and David’s reflections upon these events provides valuable insight to those who may be experiencing the same crises in their lives.

The forthcoming film will focus on the effects of addiction upon the family, and will star Steve Carrell as David.