It’s been reported that later this year Richard Linklater will direct an adaptation of Maria Semple‘s “Where’d You Go, Bernadette?,” with Annapurna’s Megan Ellison producing with Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson. Semple’s book, which has been adapted by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (500 Days of Summer, The Fault in Our Stars), is about an outspoken architect mom who disappears and an attempt by her 15-year old daughter to find her. My first reaction to this summary and to the book’s Amazon page was that this premise doesn’t seem very interesting or engaging. Why should I care about a intelligent mom with passion and responsibilities who takes a powder? If there’s one thing I don’t want to pay to see it’s the story of a hider or a quitter. (It’s a different story if the hider/quitter is childless, and if the hiding/quitting is presented in a take-it-or-leave-it, existentially cool way, as Mike Figgis did with Leaving Las Vegas.) I don’t know anything but my instinct is that Linklater’s film, presuming it gets made, is going to tank commercially (it’ll play mainly to older upmarket urban women) and be met mostly with indifference by guys like me. I’m sorry but that’s my first reaction. The situation could change, of course, but right now this almost sounds awful. On top of which it would be the second Linklater film title to use a proper name that starts with the letters “B-E-R-N.”