EXCLUSIVE: LD Entertainment has optioned the rights to Celeste Ng’s 2014 debut novel, Everything I Never Told You, and will team with Oscar-nominated producer Michael De Luca (The Social Network, Captain Phillips, Moneyball) on a film adaptation. Julia Cox (Amazon’s The Last Tycoon) is attached to pen the screenplay.

The story centers on a Chinese-American family in 1970s small-town Ohio who suffer a tragedy when the teenage daughter’s body is found in the local lake. The investigation of her death rips the family apart as the secrets they’ve kept from one another begin to emerge and demand to be reckoned with.

The novel, which explores alienation, achievement, race, gender, family, and identity, was a New York Times bestseller for 47 weeks with 1.5 million copies sold worldwide and is available in 28 languages.

Mickey Liddell and Pete Shilaimon of LD will produce with De Luca. LD is also financing the production. Exec producers are LD’s Michael Glassman and Jennifer Hilton Monroe, along with Lucy Kitada from Michael De Luca Productions.

Cox is repped by APA, manager Allison Doyle, and attorney Wayne Alexander. Her Black List script, Do No Harm, was picked up by Paramount Pictures last year with Joel Silver producing. She is also currently working on Fox 2000’s film adaptation of the novel Something In The Water, which Reese Witherspoon and Temple Hill is producing.

Ng is repped by UTA and Julie Barer at The Book Group. De Luca is repped by CAA and Tara Kole of Gang, Tyre, Ramer & Brown. LD is repped by attorney Eric Thompson.