The actress optioned “Wild” late last year as a starring vehicle, months before the memoir was published this spring.

When Oprah Winfrey announced June 1 that Cheryl Strayed’s hiking memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail was the first pick of her revived book club, among those most excited by the announcement were Reese Witherspoon and her producing partner Bruna Papandrea. The pair, who recently joined forced on their new Pacific Standard banner, had optioned the book in November, four months before its March publication date, as a starring vehicle for the actress.

“It was the first thing we picked up together,” Papandrea says of the project, which Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right) is on board to direct. As a result of the Winfrey pick, the Knopf book has seen its Amazon sales position spike from No. 175 to No. 16.

“Wild is a magical and evocative book about losing everything – family, money, your mother, your partner – and finding your true spirit alone in the woods,” Witherspoon tells THR. “I urge everyone to go out and read this amazing story of one woman’s journey to find herself.”

Pacific Standard is the combined shingle of Witherspoon’s Type A Films —whose projects included Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde, Four Christmases and This Means War — and Papandrea’s Make Movies, which is behind the upcoming zombie feature Warm Bodies, helmed by Jonathan Levine (50/50).

- HollywoodReporter.com