Though there was chatter about Kenneth Branagh being sounded out to come back into the Marvel fold for Thor: Ragnarok, it appears he’s interested in a different corner of Disney’s sprawling empire. According to Variety, he’s now on board to develop and potentially direct the long-gestating adaptation of Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl books.
The Fowl series, which began with the eponymous tome in 2001 and has continued through seven successive books, follows Artemis Fowl II. A young criminal mastermind with serious parental issues, our hero (who often edges more towards the antihero type) uses his genius and guile in a search for his dad. Oh, and he also plots to extort gold from the fairy folk through a kidnapping scheme, which slaps a great big target on his back courtesy of some of the most dangerous creatures around. But his misadventures do help shape him into the man he’ll become.
This one has been in development for years, originally by Harvey Weinstein in 2001 when he was still happily collaborating with Disney via Miramax. It went through the now standard batch of script drafts, but nothing managed to perk executives’ interest enough to secure a production order. Things went further south when Weinstein left under a dark cloud, but brightened when he agreed to work with the Mouse House in 2013 to get development of the adaptation back on track. Michael Goldenberg was attached then to combine the first two books, Artemis Fowl and Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident into one movie, but there’s no word yet on whether that’s still the case.
As also reported by The Tracking Board, the new team should consist of Branagh and playwright Conor McPherson, who is in talks to write the script. However the new screenplay turns out, it’ll have to wait for Branagh to call the shots – he’s already committed to a new big screen version of Murder On The Orient Express for 20th Century Fox.
from Empire News
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