When Henry Selick made a deal to make stop-motion movies at Disney, he put an animated version of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book into development. That film didn’t work out, but the studio is now resurrecting it as a live-action movie, which THR say Ron Howard is in talks to direct.
The story is based on Neil Gaiman’s award-winning novel that puts a genre spin on Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. The plot is about a young boy named Nobody Owens, who is raised by the ghosts in a cemetery after his family is murdered. As a teenager, the boy becomes pursued by an entity known as ‘The Man Jack,’ which killed his parents. Published in 2008, the book made history by becoming the first title to win both the Carnegie and Newberry medals.
Ron Howard will oversee the writing of a new screenplay. The filmmaker may also produce with his Imagine Entertainment partner Brian Grazer.