Indignation, the Philip Roth novel to be released this month, has a few distinctions to its credit. It's Roth's 29th work of fiction, doesn't feature his iconic hero, Nathan Zuckerman, and has been snapped up for an estimated seven-figure sum to be made into a film by producer Scott Rudin.

It is the last fact that is the most curious, given Roth's Hollywood track record. Of his many tomes, only a few have made it to the big screen to date. The Human Stain, Roth's 2000 novel about a dishonored college professor, was a national bestseller. But after spending $30 million to make the 2003 film version, starring Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman, Lakeshore Entertainment took in just $25 million at the box office. The last Roth book to be turned into a movie had been Portnoy's Complaint, back in 1972; the big-screen version was panned by critics. (The 1969 film of Goodbye, Columbus, Roth's breakout 1959 novel, was well-reviewed.)

Part of the issue is subject matter. Roth's protagonists can be unsympathetic, his postmodern style off-putting. Death is a pervading theme in his more recent works. Indignation, set during the Korean War, follows a doomed young man who flunks out of college. "He's very bleak. Compared to Roth, Nietzsche is Chuckles the Clown," says Derek Parker Royal, editor of the journal Philip Roth Studies, quoting a 2000 review of The Human Stain in the New York Review of Books.

Yet, Hollywood seems to believe Roth is ready for his close-up. Elegy, based on Roth's 2001 The Dying Animal, was released in the U.S. August 8. (Its domestic total for the first 25 days was $1.7 million.) There's also a film adaptation in the works for 1997's Pulitzer Prize-winning American Pastoral. Meanwhile, to promote Indignation, the book's publisher, Houghton Mifflin, is planning to broadcast a live appearance of the author to bookstores across the country on September 15.

The publisher declined to comment on Indignation for this story, as did Scott Rudin. Not so Tom Rosenberg, a producer on The Human Stain, Elegy, and the upcoming American Pastoral. "I'm sort of glad someone else is doing it," says Rosenberg, an executive with Lakeshore.