Not terribly long after Henry Selick gave us James and the Giant Peach and The Nightmare Before Christmas in the mid-1990s, the director embarked on his first live-action feature-length film, Monkeybone. The Brendan Fraser-led film incorporated fantastical elements and animation for a combination that resulted in a major box-office bomb (making $5 million domestically on a $75 million budget), but now well over a decade later, he’s set up his next live-action work.
The director will now adapt Adam Gidwitz‘s book A Tale Dark and Grimm, which follows Hansel and Gretel who escape their own fairy tale in order to improve their situation, only to come across witches, warlocks, dragons, and the devil himself. Off the bat, this one seems like perfect material for the filmmaker, who adapted the script with John W. Mann and Jon Gunn (The Nutcracker, B.O.O.). As Selick continues work on his next animated project The Shadow King, and we await details on this live-action feature, check out a trailer for the book below.
Have you read the novel?