The Girl on the Train film to be set in US not UK

‘It could take place in any commuter town’ … Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train. Photograph: David Levene/for the Guardian

The film adaptation of bestselling mystery novel The Girl on the Train is set to be shifted to the US from its original English setting, it has been reported.

The film rights to the book were optioned before its publication by Hollywood studio DreamWorks, and in a recent interview with the Sunday Times, its author Paula Hawkins said it was likely to take place in “upstate New York”. However, she said: “I’m not really concerned about the repositioning as I think it is the type of story that could take place in any commuter town.”

Inspired by Hawkins’ own commute to work, The Girl on the Train is a thriller about a woman whose curiosity about a house she can see from her train carriage leads her into a missing persons inquiry. The novel, described as “the new Gone Girl”, has topped the charts in the UK and US, and broke the record stay in the UK No 1 slot held by Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol.

Hawkins also appears unconcerned to exert authorial control over the planed film, a la EL James, saying: “I don’t want to be involved … let them get on with it.”

The Help’s Tate Taylor is to direct the film for DreamWorks, from a script by Erin Cressida Wilson. Emily Blunt is the favourite to land the lead role.