Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Now this is some kick-ass geeky pairing if I've ever heard of it. Avary and Gaiman? I seem to remember Avary scripting SANDMAN a while back, a Gaiman property. Nothing came of that draft, but I've heard good things from the people who read it. Avary has been teaming up with some crazy-cool people lately on some crazy-cool projects, having just co-scripted SILENT HILL with Christophe "BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF" Gans and now teaming with Gaiman.
Zemeckis has me at BACK TO THE FUTURE and I continue to be a big fan of his work (although I will admit to having not seen POLAR EXPRESS yet, so I can't really say if bringing BEOWULF to the big screen "through the magic of performance capture" is a good thing or not). Hell, I even thought WHAT LIES BENEATH was a cool movie. So, I'm psyched to see him tackling an Avary & Gaiman scripted adaptation of BEOWULF, the only monster story that's required reading in school! The press release is below! It's also up on Roger Avary's official site, which seems to be down for the moment, but check it out once it's up. It's a whole lotta fun! This could be super cool! What do you folks think?
Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman have joined forces with Steve Bing and Robert Zemeckis to bring the oldest written English language myth, Beowulf, to the big screen through the magic of performance capture. Zemeckis will direct from the screenplay by Avary and Gaiman. The project will be financed by Shangri-La Entertainment, which is currently in discussions with Sony Pictures Entertainment to distribute all of its feature films. The film will be produced by Robert Zemeckis, Steve Starkey and Jack Rapke. Martin Shafer will serve as executive producer along with Avary and Gaiman.
Zemeckis is the acclaimed Academy Award®-winning director of Forrest Gump as well as such major hit films as Castaway, What Lies Beneath, Contact, the Back to the Future trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Romancing the Stone and Death Becomes Her.
Avary, who is an actual Viking descendant, won an Academy Award for his collaboration with Quentin Tarantino on Pulp Fiction, and is the writer/director of such acclaimed films as Killing Zoe and The Rules of Attraction. Avary is currently finishing the screenplay adaptation of the hit Konami videogame, Silent Hill, for Producer Samuel Hadida and Tristar Pictures.
Gaiman is the Hugo and Nebula-Award winning author of such novels as
American Gods and Coraline, and is best known as the creator of DC Comics'
legendary Sandman. He wrote the English Language Script for the Miyazaki
film Princess Mononoke. His first feature, MirrorMask, directed by Dave
McKean, premieres at the Sundance Film Festival. His short film A Short
Film About John Bolton was just released on DVD. Projects in development
based on work by Gaiman include Coraline, which Henry Selick is writing
and directing, and Stardust, with director Matthew Vaughn. Gaiman is
writing and will be directing Death and Me, based on his DC Comics graphic
novel Death: The High Cost of Living for New Line Cinema.
