After numerous starts and stops by Hollywood executives to project Judy Blume books on to the big screen, the bestselling author and her film-maker son decided to make it happen.

The film adaptation of her 1981 young adult book Tiger Eyes opened in US theatres yesterday and simultaneously on iTunes, DirecTV and On-Demand.

It was a family project, with Blume and her son, Lawrence Blume, writing the screenplay and producing the film. Lawrence directed the movie and Blume’s husband of 26 years, George Cooper, was executive producer of the independently financed $2 million project.

Tiger Eyes is about a teenager named Davey, whose family moved from New Jersey to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to start a new life after the murder of her father.

The New York-based film-maker collaborated with his mother, who lives in Key West, Florida, mainly by e-mail and telephone.

“The biggest challenge was taking the book’s first-person inner monologue narrative and figuring out how to turn that into an actionable behaviour that actors can play,” he added.

Blume, 75, has sold more than 82 million books in 41 countries. Earlier attempts to make a feature film based on one of Blume’s books had failed.