Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Interview with the Vampire) will direct an adaptation of Paul Murray’s novel “Skippy Dies,” reports Variety. Jordan is also set to write the script, while Number 9 Films’ Stephen Woolley and Elizabeth Karlsen will produce along with James Flynn of Littlewave Film Productions.
Publisher Hamish Hamilton describes the book as follows:
Ruprecht Van Doren is an overweight genius whose hobbies include very difficult maths and the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Daniel ‘Skippy’ Juster is his roommate. In the grand old Dublin institution that is Seabrook College for Boys, nobody pays either of them much attention. But when Skippy falls for Lori, the Frisbee-playing Siren from the girls’ school next door, suddenly all kinds of people take an interest including Carl, part-time drug-dealer and official school psychopath.
While his teachers battle over modernisation, and Ruprecht attempts to open a portal into a parallel universe, Skippy, in the name of love, is heading for a showdown in the form of a fatal doughnut-eating race that only one person will survive. This unlikely tragedy will explode Seabrook’s century-old complacency and bring all kinds of secrets into the light, until teachers and pupils alike discover that the fragile lines dividing past from present, love from betrayal and even life from death have become almost impossible to read…
Jordan, Woolley and Karlsen previously collaborated on The Crying Game, while Whoolley and Jordan have worked together on films such as Breakfast on Pluto, The Butcher Boy and Mona Lisa.
