While many saw its opening weekend as something of a disappointment, “How To Train Your Dragons” has held on remarkably well, even in the face of 3D competition from “Clash of the Titans.” It might be optimistic, but we’d like to think it’s down to the film being surprisingly excellent — we caught up with it last week, and it’s easily the best of the Dreamworks Animation films and the first time that the studio has been able to hold its head high next to Pixar. So what does that mean? More movies with the word “dragon” in the title!
The Gotham Group have hired “Eagle Eye” screenwriter Travis Adam Wright to adapt “Here, There Be Dragons” and “The Search for the Red Dragon,” the first two entries in the young-adult fantasy series “The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica,” by James A Owen. The series revolves around younger version of the novelists J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams, who discover a map with coordinates of all the locations found in myth and legend. The three are then sent on a series of quests, where they encounter figures both real and fictional, including King Arthur, Captain Nemo, Peter Pan, H.G. Wells, J.M. Barrie, Don Quixote and Harry Houdini.
Wright tells the Hollywood Reporter that the series is “the best gift any fanboy of Tolkien, Lucas and Spielberg could receive. Here is a character-driven franchise that is both familiar and fresh, where wit and intelligence, not just rifles and regiments, win the day.” The conceit of combining a selection of out-of-copyright characters for new inventions hasn’t worked out too well in recent memory (see “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” or rather, don’t), but we suppose it could turn out to be a fun kid’s adventure. Lewis and Tolkien were friends and colleagues in real life, incidentally, made famous by the unfortunately apocryphal story of Lewis interrupting one of Tolkien’s readings with the exclamation “Oh god, not another fucking elf!” Hopefully, we won’t feel the same way after seeing this…
