After the success on Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl books, there was a lot of interest in turning them into a film franchise, hoping to cash-in on the popularity of Harry Potter-style family fantasy movies. However the logistics or creating a movie with so many fairies, centaurs and other fantastical creatures proved too expensive.
Thankfully for Colfer, Disney has decided to movie ahead with a $150 million adaptation of one of his other books, Airman, about a 19th Century boy who is locked up after being accused of killing the king of Ireland’s Saltee islands, and eventually escapes, becoming the ‘Airman’, who uses a hang-glider to return to the Saltees to exact revenge and attempt to steal enough money to go to America. With all sorts of different flying machines, from hot air balloons to aeroplane’s, mixed with derring-do and action, you can certainly see why Disney might think it would be a hit.
Variety reports that the studio has now set Ann Peacock (The Lion, The Witch and The Warbrobe) to write the script for the film version, which Gil Kenan (Monster House, City Of Embers) will direct. The film will be produced by Robert Zemeckis through his Imagemovers production company. And yes, that does mean the film will be another of Zemeckis’ motion-capture animated projects.
At the moment things are at an early stage, so there’s no news on when we might see the film in cinemas.