Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.

This is encouraging. THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER described HBO's plan to develop the classic Crockett Johnson children's book series HAROLD & THE PURPLE CRAYON as an animated show. According to their story, the show will be developed as a conventionally animated project, since computer animation wouldn't really fit with the simple, low-tech look of the original books.

Normally I wouldn't care about the development of a children's show, but there's something in the story that got me interested:

"PURPLE CRAYON had been slated for development as an animated feature film at Sony, but HBO pushed to develop the Sony-licensed product as an animated series. Sony executives haven't scrubbed plans for a film, however, hopeful that the series will rekindle a feature project."

Hot damn. Michael Tolkin's script for this film is a thing of beauty and power, and it deserves to be made. Both Henry Selick and Spike Jonze have spent time trying to get this movie made. For a long time, it looked like this was going to be Spike's debut feature. I remember how heartbroken I was when he moved on to (the admittedly amazing) BEING JOHN MALKOVICH. Here's hoping that the show does well and Sony really does pull the trigger on this script at long last. It would be lovely to see a piece of writing this great get rescued from the obscurity of development hell.

"Moriarty" out.