Fox 2000 has set Billy Elliot helmer Stephen Daldry to helm an adaptation of Mira Bartók’s fantasy book, The Wonderling
A big screen adaptation of author and illustrator Mira Bartók’s upcoming fantasy series The Wonderling is in development at Fox 2000. The Hollywood Reporter has the news, revealing that Billy Elliot and The Hours helmer Stephen Daldry is attached to direct.
“My current project is an illustrated middle grade fantasy trilogy called ‘The Wonderling,’ which won the 2014 runner up for the SCBWI Work-in-Progress Grant for Fiction,” Bartók writes on her official site. “The three books in the series are (tentatively) titled ‘Songcatcher,’ ‘Rat Rebellion,’ and ‘The Singing Tree.'”
Bartók, whose published works also include the best seller “The Memory Palace: a Memoir,” offers the following description of The Wonderling‘s plot:
The Wonderling is set in a futuristic (slightly steampunk) Victorian land ruled by the High Hats, while the Groundlings, the animal-human hybrids, live in servitude, working in underground factories in the City Below the City. Our hero, the Wonderling, is a shy, one-eared, fox-like foundling known only as Number Thirteen who, with the help of his bird-friend Trinket, escapes the treacherous orphanage he was brought up in, and goes on a remarkable journey to seek his destiny.
In 2011, Daldry helmed the big screen drama Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, based on the book by Jonathan Safran Foer. The film version, released in 2011, starred Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock and young Thomas Horn. He followed that with 2014’s Trash (co-directed with Christian Duurvoort) and will next direct Netflix’s upcoming limited series, The Crown.
