Variety reports that Columbia Pictures and producer Scott Rudin have acquired rights to make a film about Henry Molaison, the subject of an experimental brain operation with the side effect that he wasn’t able to form new memories. The film is based on the soon-to-be-published memoirs of Dr. Suzanne Corkin, the professor of behavioral neuroscience at MIT, who worked with Molaison for 45 years, and the story of the subject known as “H.M.” will be told through her eyes. Columbia and Rudin have also purchase the rights to the Philip Hilts’ related 1996 book about H.M. called “Memory’s Ghost: The Nature of Memory and the Strange Tale of Mr. M.” Molaison passed away in December at the age of 82 from respiratory failure leading Rudin to pursue the rights to tell his story.
The Variety story elaborates on Molaison’s life with the following bio:
H.M. suffered a head injury in a fall at age 9, but it was unclear why he developed progressively more violent seizures, with blackouts and convulsions so serious that he was forced to give up his work fixing motors. Lobotomies were considered radical fixes for seizures when H.M. received the surgery in 1953. After the procedure, he could remember only things that occurred in his life and the world before the operation. Scientists used his misfortune to study the brain and memory, with H.M. serving as a willing patient for decades.
