David Magee Set to Adapt The Historian

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Finding Neverland scribe David Magee is in negotiations to adapt Elizabeth Kostova's vampire-themed best-seller The Historian for Columbia Pictures. Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher are producing through their Red Wagon shingle.

In May, Sony Pictures Entertainment paid $1.5 million for Kostova's debut novel, which centers on a young woman who travels through Europe looking for her father who went missing while trying to find the grave of Vlad the Impaler. In the process, she battles nefarious vampires. Set amid ruined castles and moonlit crypts, Kostova's 656-page novel weaves three story lines that deal with Dracula's Eastern European homeland.

Little, Brown paid $2 million for the book, which was published in June and hit No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list July 3.