Tuesday, March 3, 2009

More, more movies and musicals, said the baby!

Mo Willems, that zany mastermind of Knuffle Bunny, Pigeon, and Geisel-Award-winning Elephant and Piggie, has just revealed that Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical is slated to go up in May (ish?) at the Kennedy Center in DC and then tour the country. Written by Mr. Willems himself, he promises "the show will be a wild ride, filled with clever projections, Bunraku Puppets, dance, and at least one song in utter gibberish."

All I can say is, IS IT HERE YET?

Word on the street also has it that Christopher Columbus will be directing Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, the film adaptation of Rick Riordan's smashingly good fun series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Percy will be played by Logan Lerman, and Brandon T. Jackson will play his satyr friend, Grover Underwood. It's going to be quite some time until this comes out, IMDB says it will be released in February 2010. Fortunately, Riordan's Demigod Files and forthcoming The Last Olympian (May!) will be around to sate our armchair-adventure needs.

Blog-pal Katie and I have finally seen Inkheart and Coraline--the latter in 3-D, holy cow--and while there were some parts of the films differed from the books, for better or worse, they were great fun! Perhaps I will have the courage to write longer reviews of them someday, but for now, I advise you to visit the Horn Book's film reviews.

If you could pick any story, new or old, to be made into a film and/or musical, which would you most want to see? Who would direct it or star as your favorite character? There have been so many book-into-movie adaptations...but I've yet to see Garth Nix's Sabriel (Peter Jackson, I'm looking at you) or Catherine Gilbert Murdock's Dairy Queen. D.J. has to be one of my all-time favorite characters, I would love to see some undiscovered talent fill her shoes (cleats?). Movie directors, are you listening?
(I think Katie played this game back in October, about "which are the best books that never existed?").

No comments: