You gotta kind of feel for Henry Selick. The man behind "Coraline" didn't have a great 2012, with his Disney/Pixar project "Shadow King" getting scrapped and shelved when no other studio wanted it. And while he was attached to direct Neil Gaiman's "The Graveyard Book" last spring, it seems the turn of the events of the studio has seen that job go to someone else as well.
Ron Howard is now in talks to helm the adaptation, and instead of being animated as was the previous plan, it will be a live action feature. The 2009 Newberry Medal award winning book, is essentially a ghoulish riff on Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book,” with a young orphan boy growing up in a graveyard surrounded by ghosts, vampires and other things that go bump in the night. While this may have seemed like perfect Selick material, Howard is a less obvioius choice. However, given how hard he was pushing for his ambitiously sprawling multi-film and TV series version of Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" to get made, it seems there's a fantasy itch he really wants to scratch (he also just signed on to helm "All I've Got," a supernatural drama for J.J. Abrams).
But we'll see how it all plays out. Howard is negotiating, and a new script will have to be commissioned, so this is a couple years away at least. Howard's next effort "Rush," will theaters on September 20th.
