Rosamund Pike Is The Queen Of Literary Adaptations

This girl has gone full-on literary screen queen. As Variety reports, Rosamund Pike has just been cast in The Deep Blue Good-By, and her new role has a lot in common with her Oscar-nominated performance in Gone Girl. Like Gone Girl, which was adapted from the 2012 Gillian Flynn novel of the same name, The Deep Blue Good-By is also based on a bestseller. The novel is the first of 21 books in the Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald and it follows a Sherlock Holmes-esque investigator who, in The Deep Blue Good-By, must track down a murderer who moved to the Florida Keys in order to find a stolen fortune. Christian Bale will play McGee and Pike the female lead opposite him.

So why is Pike the ideal candidate to play a literary heroine — or even a literary villain? Here's why she's the best choice to bring a book adaptation to life onscreen.

She's had plenty of practice.

The world may know her as Amy from Gone Girl, but that's not her only book-to-screen role. Pike filmed the flick Hector and the Search for Happiness — based on the novel of the same name by Francois Lelord — just before Gone Girl. The actress has also appeared in the 2009 adaptation of Lynn Barber's memoir An Education and the 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice opposite Keira Knightley.

She makes the source material her own.

I went into Flynn's adaptation of Gone Girl excited to see the story play out, but halfway through I realized that I was watching it for Pike's performance. She may not have been the Amy I imagined from the book, but she was the one I wanted to see more of onscreen.

She often outshines her male co-stars.

Sorry, Ben Affleck and Neil Patrick Harris, but we weren't watching Gone Girl for you — this was Pike's movie through and through, just in case her Oscar nod didn't prove that. The Deep Blue Good-by may be a Travis McGee movie, but something tells me that Pike's character could end up running the show — even next to an acting heavyweight like Christian Bale.

Images: 20th Century Fox; Giphy