UPDATED: Disney Lands Rights to Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book – Director Named

Steve Barton |

Apr 27, 2012

Source Name:

Deadline

Source Url:

http://www.deadline.com/2012/04/disney-scares-up-deal-for-neil-gaimans-the-graveyard-book/

Post Thumb:

/apr12/graveyardthumb.jpg

Neil Gaiman is definitely one of the more popular writers among the Dread Central crew so, even though the story might be geared toward the younger crowd, we’re all still pretty stoked to hear that his Newberry Medal-winning The Graveyard Book is heading to the big screen.

Per Deadline, Disney has just made a high six-figure deal for The Graveyard Book, the bestselling children’s title by Neil Gaiman. The book is a riff on Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, but instead of a boy raised by wolves in the jungle, Gaiman tells the story of the last surviving child of a murdered family raised by ghosts in a graveyard.

The book attracted attention from just about every studio upon its release by HarperCollins back in 2009 and was optioned for a large fee by UK Effects House Framestore. They had Neil Jordan attached to direct, but the project never got off the ground even though they kept renewing the option. Disney production chief Sean Bailey stepped in and made Framestore a producer.

UPDATE
“The Disney deal for Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book keeps getting more interesting. I’ve learned that Henry Selick, who helmed Gaiman’s Coraline, is now attached to direct The Graveyard Book at Disney. Selick, best known for Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas and Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach, is already working for Disney-based Pixar on a top secret film. But he’ll do this one after. Selick is repped by The Gotham Group. They are looking for a screenwriter now.”

Book Synopsis:
Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy.

He would be completely normal if he didn’t live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead.

There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy–an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack–who has already killed Bod’s family…

Beloved master storyteller Neil Gaiman returns with a luminous new novel for the audience that embraced his New York Times bestselling modern classic Coraline. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, The Graveyard Book is sure to enthrall readers of all ages.

Look for more soon!