Guess which children's book is becoming a movie

[The Guard]

Warner Brothers, Castle Rock Entertainment, Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks are teaming up to bring THE POLAR EXPRESS to the silver screen. I guess it might get greenlighted for a Christmas 2003 release. I'm thrilled, of course, because "The Polar Express" was my favorite holiday book when I was little. I'm just seeing possibilities for this movie.

[Terminatah]

From Dark Horizons (http://www.darkhorizons.com/news.htm):


Good ol' Bob Zemeckis, the man behind "Contact" and the "Back to the Future" trilogy is always pushing the boundaries of FX in films which you wouldn't think need many (ie. "Castaway", "What Lies Beneath"). Now, The Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-polar2dec02001431.story) reports that this film with Tom Hanks as a train conductor who takes a young boy on a ride to the North Pole, will utilise a technique rarely seen before. Seems that every scene in the film will be shot with digital cameras in front of a blank screen with the various actors using motion-capture sensors to capture every nuance of their performance for the computer animators to create later. In effect this is a digitally animated movie but unlike say "Final Fantasy", here the characters will be designed to look like their voice counterparts to the point where a flashback of Hanks's character as a young boy will be a virtual model using Hanks' current facial and muscle structure combined with photos from his younger days to create the visual look. The announcement of these details have raised eyebrows in not only labour union official circles who fear regular film crews will be cut out but also by economists who suspect the budget, currently estimated to be $150 million, will blow out. -Terminatah

[Lachesis]

Bah. We all saw how well "Jumanji" turned out, didn't we?

My money's on "Coraline," Henry Selick's new project with Michelle Pfeiffer as The Other Mother.

[Matt Hazuda]

Cinescape has been talking about this one for a couple of years now, but I guess it finally got out of development hell. On one hand I'm happy to see one of my favorite children's books make it to the big screen, but on the other, the book didn't have much to work with, so I'm a little scared.

As long as the don't do the idiodic "kids rule, parents/old people are stupid" crap, or the classic "one parent is missing" that seems to have become a kids movie tradition lately I'll be happy. and with Hanbks attached, it'll bring some class to the project.

[G. Wen]

I don't think there is enough material in The Polar Express for it to work as a movie. The writers will have to add fillers if they want the movie to be longer than 45 min. I hope it's good filler.

[The Guard]

Just a movie based on the concept itself will be cool. It could go the DISNEY route and still not suck if it's done right. Some of the illustrations in that book...seeing them come to life will be interesting.