FRANKFURT, Germany (Agence France Presse)–Filmmaker Atom Egoyan won a prize for the best film adaptation of a book for his thriller "Where the Truth Lies" starring Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth at the 58-year old Frankfurt Book Fair over the weekend. Egoyan was joined by French filmmaker Luc Besson ("La Femme Nikita"), who was there to promote his animated feature "Arthur and the Invisibles", which he based on a four-volume saga he wrote himself. This was seen as a natural progression to the growing trend of establishing book fairs as prime hunting ground for Hollywood agents scouting material for the next blockbuster. With "The Devil Wears Prada" and the "Bridget Jones", "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter" franchises all based on best-selling books, the Frankfurt Book Fair is now jostling to get in the game. "We are offering a special place for publishing houses and film studios to get together," Anna-Katharina Werdnik, the head of the book fair’s film and television division, told AFP. Werdnik said the five-day fair was increasingly becoming a place where producers can get in on the ground floor of a promising enterprise by spotting works that are only just on their way to bookstores. While the Frankfurt Book Fair has long been known as a crucial networking opportunity for authors and publishers, bringing filmmakers into the mix has the potential to raise the stakes for all. "We want to bring together two worlds that do not know each other very well yet," Werdnik said. "We knew there was demand on both sides." Werdnik said her Film and TV Forum had seen a 30-percent increase in traffic this year and that the potential for growth was enormous. "But we need big names, big producers for the Forum to develop. Cinema loves glamour and so do publishers," she said.
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