The guys behind Smallville, Alfred Gough and Mile Millar, have been hired to adapt the James Frey and Jobie Hughes novel, I Am Number Four, for the big screen. As we reported back in June, this is the unpublished novel that Michael Bay is attached to produce and possibly direct
I Am Number Four is about a group of nine children from a planet called Lorien who have been attacked by a hostile race from another planet. The alien kids and their guardians evacuate to earth, where three are killed. The protagonist, a Lorien boy named John Smith, hides in Paradise, Ohio, as a human and tries to evade his predators.
Although that sounds a bit sedate for Bay (and way too close to the TV series Roswell, or indeed Animorphs), we’re sure there’s plenty of action and things they can get to explode. Indeed it’s probably why they’ve gone to Gough and Millar, as they have plenty of experience with unusual teens in Smallville, and have also worked on massive blockbuster scripts like Spider-man 2 and The Mummy 3.
Oh and by the way, if you’re wondering whether the James Frey who’s co-written the I Am Number Four book is the same one who pissed off Oprah Winfrey when it turned out he’d made up parts of his autobiography, A Million Little Pieces – yes it is.