When Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams’ children’s adventure novel, Tunnels, was published a couple of years, it was marketed as being the new Harry Potter. While the sales weren’t quite in the same league as JK Rowling’s tales, it’s sold over a million copies and it seems Hollywood is still thinking it could make a successful movie franchise. Although the rights were optioned by Relativity in 2007, since then it’s all been quiet, but Variety now reports that the company has hired Splice and Cube director, Vincenzo Natali, to turn the book into a film.
The novel follows the adventures of 14-year-old Will Burrows, who has a fascination with the buried past, driven by his unconventional archeologist father. However when his dad goes missing, Will is drawn into a strange subterranean world and a hidden civilisation dominated by a race called the Styx. He also discovers secrets about himself that could change his life forever.
With a second book already published and a third on the way, it seems Hollywood feels the the Tunnels series is now well enough established to get a film version made, with Joel Bergvali handling the screenplay. There’s no news yet though on when we might actually see the film.