Steven Spielberg appears to have finally settled on his next project according to Variety, that being an adaptation of the novel War Horse by Michael Morpurgo. The novel will be adapted by Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) and Richard Curtis (Love Actually, The Girl in the Cafe). The children’s novel is a World War I story told from the perspective of a horse.
Here’s the book’s product description from Amazon:
In 1914, Joey, a beautiful bay-red foal with a distinctive cross on his nose, is sold to the army and thrust into the midst of the war on the Western Front. With his officer, he charges toward the enemy, witnessing the horror of the battles in France. But even in the desolation of the trenches, Joey’s courage touches the soldiers around him and he is able to find warmth and hope. But his heart aches for Albert, the farmer’s son he left behind. Will he ever see his true master again?
I can’t say this sparks much interest for me. As with most recent bits of Spielberg news (like the short-lived remake of Harvey), I wish he’d just crack down and make either the Civil War-era Lincoln biopic or Interstellar, the hard sci-fi script involving wormholes that Jonathon Nolan (The Prestige, The Dark Knight) wrote. War Horse just sounds too sentimental, romanticized and contrived for me. but we’ll see.
Spielberg is also in post-production with his performance capture film The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, which will debut during the 2011 holiday season.
Disney will release the DreamWorks production on August 10th, 2011.
