This Bird Has Flown: Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles is adapting her debut novel for a film at Universal

Last Updated on November 14, 2022

The Bangles‘ singer and guitarist Susanna Hoffs is partnering with Universal to adapt her music industry-focused debut novel This Bird Has Flown. At the head of the adaptation are Liza Chasin and Bruna Papandrea, who will produce the adaptation for 3Dot Productions and Made Up Stories, respectively.

This Bird Has Flown perches on bookstore shelves on April 4, 2023, courtesy of the publishing house Little, Brown and Company. Described as a story revolving around music, fate, redemption, and love, the synopsis for This Bird Has Flown reads as follows:

Jane Start is thirty-three, broke, and recently single. Ten years prior, she had a hit song—written by world-famous superstar Jonesy—but Jane hasn’t had a breakout since. Now she’s living out of four garbage bags at her parents’ house, reduced to performing to Karaoke tracks in Las Vegas. Rock bottom. 

But when her longtime manager Pippa sends Jane to London to regroup, she’s seated next to an intriguing stranger on the flight—the other Tom Hardy, an elegantly handsome Oxford professor of literature. Jane is instantly smitten by Tom and soon truly inspired. But it’s not Jane’s past alone that haunts her second chance at stardom and at love. Is Tom all that he seems? And can Jane emerge from the shadow of Jonesy’s earlier hit and into the light of her own?

In turns deeply sexy, riotously funny, and utterly joyful, This Bird Has Flown explores love, passion, and the ghosts of our past and offers a glimpse inside the music business that could only come from beloved songwriter Susanna Hoffs.

“As a lifelong fiction, film, and music junkie, writing the novel was the realization of a dream,” said Hoffs. “As I was writing This Bird Has Flown, songs provided the score; I visualized the action and unfolding dialogue as if I were watching a movie spring to life in my head. Getting to adapt the book for the screen is the cherry on top of this joyous experience.

“I’m also a longtime fan of Liza’s and Bruna’s work,” explained Hoffs. “When my book-to-film agent, Sylvie Rabineau, shared a list of potential producers, I zeroed in on them, but they were listed separately. They loved the characters and frisson between them, the peek behind the curtain of a thirty-something female musician struggling to survive in that world. When they decided to collaborate on the film adaptation, and then Erik Baiers at Universal connected with the novel, too, I knew we had our ultimate dream team!”

“We knew we had to team up again when we read Susanna’s incredible book. She literally had us at hello!” Papandrea and Chasin jointly said. “Her experience in the music biz and her deep love for big romantic movies made it so clear to us that we wanted to work with her on the adaptation. And the icing on the cake is getting to do it with the brilliant folks at Universal.”

As a show-stopping member of The Bangles, Hoffs has several chart-topping hits alongside the band’s other members, Debbi Peterson, Annette Zilinskas, and Vicki Peterson. Between the songs: “Manic Monday,” “Walk Like an Egyptian,” “Hazy Shade of Winter,” and “Eternal Flame,” The Bangles will go down in history as a female foursome that helped pave the way for women in the music industry.

What’s your favorite song by The Bangles? I’m partial to “Hazy Shade of Winter,” an upbeat earworm if I ever heard one. I’m excited to see if Hoffs’ talents range beyond the stage for her literary debut, and This Bird Has Flown sounds like a romantic comedy worth throwing up horns for. Let’s go!