After rumors of his involvement with a ‘Wolverine’ sequel came and went, “Slumdog Millionaire” writer Simon Beaufoy has found himself a new project. THR revealed that the Oscar-winning writer will work on a script for a Dreamworks’ animated project called “Truckers.”
The film is based on the first installment of Terry Pratchett’s Bromeliad trilogy, a children’s fantasy book series. “Truckers” follows the adventures of a group of Nomes, a race of tiny 4-inch people, who live under the floorboards of a department store. They have never been outside and, to them, things like day and night, sun and rain are nothing more than legends. Their whole world is thrown upside down when they learn of the department stores’ upcoming demolition. It is then up Masklin, one of the newest arrivals to the group of Nomes, to mastermind a plan for all to escape into the oblivions of the Outside.
What THR and everyone has seemingly failed to note, is Pratchett’s “Truckers,” was the post-“Slumdog Millionaire,” project that director Danny Boyle was supposed to be working on for Dreamworks as well, but the project fell through last fall (he first brought it up, when we asked him about it during TIFF). Back then it was being written by “Millions” screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce. In December, Boyle noted how the project was unfortunately dead.
“I was working with Frank Cottrell Boyce, who wrote Millions. We were working on the script at DreamWorks together, ’cause animated films take forever. I normally only ever do one thing at a time, I normally never double up on what I do, but I was doing that on this one. It’s fallen apart, unfortunately, so it’s not going to happen. [Animated films are] so expensive and complicated. They’re a huge thing.”
He again, reiterated in January of this year how the project was DOA. In September he said the film would be a “mix of live-action and animation.”
However, obviously both Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy have a lot of juice in Hollywood after this year’s Oscars and both are now Academy Award winners. Boyle basically had the pick of the litter of projects after his Oscar win. Did he decide to get Beaufoy to re-write the script and start all over again? Sounds fairly plausible considering Boyle’s rejected all the big projects that have been thrown at him post-Oscars.
Whatever happened to Boyle’s reported collaboration with Danish enfante terrible Lars Von Trier, is that ever going to happen?
I love the synopsis of “Truckers” – never read Pratchett’s books before, but it seems very “Indian in the Cupboard”/”The Borrowers”-ish.
So whatever happened to Ponte Tower and Solomon Grundy?
Ponte he passed on Solomon Grundy kinda got killed because it was too similar to Benjamin Button at the time. Use the search function in the playlist and you should be able to find both stories.
This has been in development hell at DreamWorks eight or so years. with a bunch of directors, false stars, rewrites and starting over; that being said, I think Boyle is off the project.
@alex, yes, it’s entirely possible, but no one seemed to know this used to be a Boyle project, so i think it’s a very fair question to ask.
Ah, but if I used the search function then I wouldn’t have anything left to comment on!
I woulda posted the links to the two stories you asked about, but i was too lazy. I’m so beat. thanks for reading.
From what I had read about the project, I am rather sad that Solomon Grundy is now defunct. It seemed interesting — different enough from Benjamin Button, too. (Hey, even if it was the same, they could trim an hour from it and it’d be the 2-hour version of Button, and THEN people would go see it!)
Yeah, i hope Solomon Grundy comes back one day — it could. It does sound super interesting. Projects do get killed when something similar is produced first, but that doesn’t mean, given a bit of time that it won’t come back if someone is interested at the right time. Here’s to hoping.
Sounds like a great read I will get it and have a look.