Warner Bros. has hired screenwriter Peter Straughan (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) to write the screenplay adaptation for Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch.

The news comes just four months after Warner Bros. entered talks to acquire the rights to this novel, which takes place over a two-decade period. The story follows a 13-year-old boy who loses his mother during a bombing at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The boy ends up surviving the explosion and steals the famous Carel Fabritius painting The Goldfinch. He ends up being taken in by an Upper East Side family before reuniting with his alcoholic birth father, who takes him to Las Vegas.

Nina Jacobson (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1), Brett Ratner (Tower Heist) and Bradford Simpson (World War Z) are producing the adaptation. The book was first published last fall, and has been on the New York Times best seller list for 39 weeks.

Peter Straughan's other writing credits include The Men Who Stare at Goats, The Debt, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, this year's Frank and the upcoming Our Brand Is Crisis.