A few months ago we reported on The Gotham Group picking up the rights to Kat Falls’ young adult novel called Dark Life, and now it seems the movie adaptation has moved up in the world, with Variety reporting a deal involving Disney coming onboard to finance the project, with Robert Zemeckis attached to direct the film.
The book, described as an underwater western, is set in a near-future world in which global warming has led to rising sea levels and natural disasters on the land. In order to escape this, some people have set up home on the ocean floor. The story follow a teenage boy from under the waves teaming up with a girl from the surface to uncover a government conspiracy.
The Zemeckis news in particularly interesting, as it’s immediately sparked speculation over whether he’s going to make Dark Life as a live action or motion capture flick. Last month Disney announced plans to close down Zemeckis’ mo-cap studio, based in Northern California, once production was completed on Mars Needs Moms (although its believed the director was hoping to keep it open through a series of independent deals with various production companies, rather than relying on Disney to fund it). However while Dark life could indeed be a motion-capture film, it’s also the sort of movie that could benefit from the expertise Zemeckis has in creating CG environments, but made with live action people.
If the Disney deal is for a live action film, it’d be the first one Zemeckis has made since Cast Away in 2000, as since then he’s only dealt with CG in the likes of Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carole. With Disney hoping to turn Dark Life into a major franchise, it’s likely they’ll want real people, and it’ll be interesting to see whether the motion capture obsessed Zemeckis agrees with them.