Novelist and screenwriter Andrew Klavan's first work for the Christian market has been optioned for a movie by the makers of Oscar-winning film The Hurt Locker and the "Twilight" films.

Summit Entertainment is planning a screen version of the Thomas Nelson "Homelander" series, launched in April 2009 with The Last Thing I Remember--originally in hardcover, with a trade paper edition due out in June--and The Long Way Home in February 2010.

Centering on the adventures of teenager Charlie West, who unexpectedly finds himself wanted by both police and terrorists, the series has sold 50,000 copies to date. The third installment, The Truth of the Matter, is due out in November with an as-yet-unnamed fourth closing out the series in August 2011.

Well established in mainstream publishing with Hollywood script credits, too, Klavan said that he hoped the film would not lose the faith element of his Nelson books. "Summit made the "Twilight" books that had a definite undercurrent of faith and morality and they kept that stuff in," he said.

"There is always a danger with this in Hollywood," added Klavan, who became a Christian several years ago from a Jewish and atheist background. "Hollywood is just by nature antithetical to faith, antithetical to a religious point of view. I am just going to keep my fingers crossed and hope that they come through, but we'll see."

Nelson fiction publicist Katie Bond said that the company is extending its young adult partnership with Klavan, signing him for three more, standalone novels after the "Homelanders" series is completed. The first will be a supernatural suspense novel tentatively titled Schizophrenia.

Click here to listen to Christian Retailing Editor Andy Butcher's extended interview with Klavan.

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