Now ‘Opal’ won’t get a movie

Not coming to a theater near you: the movie version of “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,” the debut novel by Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan that was yanked off shelves this week when it was discovered to contain multiple plagiarized passages.

A source close to DreamWorks, which had optioned “Opal Mehta,” said Friday that work on the movie, which was in the early stages of development, has been halted. The movie was to have been co-produced by Alloy Entertainment, which helped conceptualize the novel and owns half the copyright, and Contrafilm.

Viswanathan, whose novel was published by Little, Brown and Co., lifted scenes, language and plot points from two novels, “Sloppy Firsts” and “Second Helpings” by popular young adult novelist Megan McCafferty.

-- Robin Abcarian