DreamWorks Picks up Neil Gaimans' Interworld

Lisandro writes to tell us Geeks of Doom is reporting that author Neil Gaiman recently announced DreamWorks has optioned the film rights for his upcoming novel, 'Interworld'. "Gaiman said that in 1996 he began working with Michael Reaves on the idea for a story 'about a boy who finds himself in the middle of a war between two equally powerful forces, who joins a super-team consisting of versions of himself from different alternate realities to try and maintain the cosmic balance.' Soon after, the idea was pitched to DreamWorks and other studios, but was turned down."

Comments

Re:Confused

[C0rinthian]

Neil Gaiman is probably best known for the critically acclaimed comic series "The Sandman" and has done a slew of other successful comic series and novels.

When do I report for the casting call?

[BendingSpoons]

I'm glad to hear that an author I've never heard of has secured film rights to a book that hasn't been released yet, but I think I liked this movie better when it was called 'The One' and starred Jet Li.

Re:Confused

[TheRaven64]

If you've not heard of the author, you might find an interview that he did for a little site called Slash-something useful.

Re:Confused

[Selfbain]

He also writes books that win so many awards that he is starting to turn them down. He won the Hugo for best novel one year, the Hugo for best novella the next year and then turned down the award for best novel the year after that.

Movie futures

[TheWoozle]

I wonder if we could start a commodities market where movie studios sell tickets/DVDs/downloads for future movie productions. Maybe then "news" like this might be worth something.

Otherwise, wake me up when the movie has actually started *filming*.

Re:Movie futures

[TheRaven64]

I've been saying for a long time this is how TV should be made. Make a pilot, and put it out for the public to view. Set up an escrow fund where people who like the pilot (or, if it's an established writer / producer like their other work) can put up some cash. If it reaches the amount needed to make the series within a given timeframe then the funds are released and the series is made. The final product is then released for download to the people who paid for it, who can then distribute it as they want (you're paying for the item to be created, rather than for the copy, because that's the thing that has the real value).

Copyright would still protect you from derived works, so if the series is successful then people are likely to be willing to pay for a sequel and the original author is the only one who can make it.

Re:Confused

[Scrameustache]

I've never heard of either the author or the novel -- and I'd like to think I'm fairly up on this type of thing. You'd LIKE to think that, but you really, really shouldn't ;-)

Re:Confused

[Achromatic1978]

Although difficult to pull off well, I could see a film of American Gods being pretty fantastic (though it'd piss off the Religious Right no end). Someone needs to option that.

Since Gaiman is on-topic

[anethema]

Anyone who enjoys Alice-in-Wonderland type stories, the book Neverwhere by Gaiman is probably one of my favorite books ever.

Does an excellent job of telling a Wonderland type story where the protagonist is thrown into a totally different world, fairly close to this one. It is certainly my favorite work by Gaiman (much more so than American Gods, which seemed to be more 'critically acclaimed')

Amazon page: http://www.amazon.com/Neverwhere-Novel-Neil-Gaiman /dp/0060557818/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/103-3732875-4118235 ?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182206627&sr=8-2

It's not just Hugos

[reason]

From his website, "Neil Gaiman is the winner of 3 Hugos, 2 Nebulas, 1 World Fantasy Award, 4 Bram Stoker Awards, 6 Locus Awards, 2 British SF Awards, 1 British Fantasy Award, 3 Geffens, 1 International Horror Guild Award and 1 Mythopoeic."

Many of these are judged awards, not fan awards.