Alice Rohrwacher Takes Italo Calvino’s Beloved Coming-of-Age Classic to the Big Screen

Alice Rohrwacher is climbing into Calvino. The Italian filmmaker behind 'Happy as Lazzaro' and 'La Chimera' is officially directing a feature adaptation of Italo Calvino's 1957 classic 'The Baron in the Trees.' While Hollywood keeps strip-mining fresh best-sellers for franchise fuel, she’s taking on a true literary heavyweight. It suits her.

So, what is she making?

Calvino’s novel follows Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo, a 12-year-old baron in the 1700s who storms out of a tyrannical family dinner, scrambles up an oak, and decides he will never touch the ground again. Sounds like a stunt. It isn’t. From the canopy, he builds a life: hunting, tinkering through engineering problems, falling in love, and trading letters with the big thinkers of his day. The whole thing is playful, stubborn, and defiantly free — exactly the kind of magical-realist groove Rohrwacher lives in.

The plan (so far)

• Director: Alice Rohrwacher
• Source: Italo Calvino’s 'The Baron in the Trees' (published 1957), a cornerstone of modern Italian literature
• Production start: Second half of 2027, across Europe (per Variety)
• Producers: Rome-based Our Films, with Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Mieli leading
• Rights: Secured from The Wylie Agency after years of negotiations, driven by Mieli
• Tone: Whimsical, gently radical, and very much in the magical-realist lane

Why this story still hits

Cosimo’s decision to live in the trees reads like a kid’s rebellion, but Calvino uses it as a sharp metaphor for stepping outside the rules without checking out of the world. Up there, Cosimo gets a clean vantage point on the Age of Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the rise and fall of Napoleon — all while he’s figuring himself out. It’s both coming-of-age and sweeping historical chronicle, told with Calvino’s fable-adjacent voice and vivid imagery. If Rohrwacher brings her usual balance of wonder and bite, this could sing.

The producers’ take

Lorenzo Mieli, who spent years prying these rights loose, sounds fixated on Cosimo’s lifelong commitment — not just the rebellious kickoff.

'The image I am most tied to with this story is not so much the boy in the tree; but the adult man who spends his entire life living in a tree,' Mieli told Variety.

A few more notes

Variety first flagged the project; expect a true international package given who’s steering this and where it’s shooting. And yes, the news already pinged around film Twitter — Spanish-language accounts were on it by May 29, 2026. Bottom line: this isn’t a quick IP flip. It’s a slow-brew adaptation of a giant of European fiction, now in the hands of a director who actually speaks its language.