If you’ve read any books about popular economics, chances are you’ve heard of the Dutch Tulip Mania of the early 1600s. One of the first examples of a bubble economy, at its height, tulip bulbs were selling for 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman. Well now someone’s making a movie about those crazy Dutch flower lovers, an adaptation of Deborah Moggach’s novel Tulip Fever, which is set to star Zach Galifianakis and Christoph Waltz.
The film was part of The Weinstein Company’s upcoming slate being sold at Cannes, as reported by ScreenDaily:
Rounding out the slate is Tulip Fever. Justin Chadwick directs from a screenplay by Tom Stoppard. Alicia Vikander, Dane DeHaan, Jack O’Connell, Holliday Grainger, Christoph Waltz and Zach Galifianaki star. Alison Owen produces.
Here’s the book synopsis:
In 1630s Amsterdam, tulipomania has seized the populace. Everywhere men are seduced by the fantastic exotic flower. But for wealthy merchant Cornelis Sandvoort, it is his young and beautiful wife, Sophia, who stirs his soul. She is the prize he desires, the woman he hopes will bring him the joy that not even his considerable fortune can buy.
Cornelis yearns for an heir, but so far he and Sophia have failed to produce one. In a bid for immortality, he commissions a portrait of them both by the talented young painter Jan van Loos. But as Van Loos begins to capture Sophia’s likeness on canvas, a slow passion begins to burn between the beautiful young wife and the talented artist.
As the portrait unfolds, so a slow dance is begun among the household’s inhabitants. Ambitions, desires, and dreams breed a grand deception — and as the lies multiply, events move toward a thrilling and tragic climax.
I just hope that at the climactic moment, the painter Van Loos turns to Sophia solemnly and says, “You like tulips?” And when she responds in the affirmative, he replies, “Then put your two lips right here, madame,” and points to the convergence of his breeches. I’d love to see that, plus the earliest examples of “tickets to the ball game” and “have you seen my new watch.”