Disney Snaps Up Clive Barker's Abarat
Source: ic Liverpool , Julez Monday, September 6, 2004
Tell you the truth I never heard of that book before...In an interview with ic Liverpool, writer Clive Barker revealed that Walt Disney Pictures has snapped up the film rights for his "Abarat" books. Screenwriter John Harrison is adapting.
Despite having been involved in making the movie versions of many of his other books, he is content this time to let the producers have their own way. "I'm pretty much ready to pass the books over to them and let them take them as they will," says Barker.
"The screenwriter is a man called John Harrison, who I respect enormously and who has been very respectful of my desires where the book is concerned and he tells me the script is loyal to the books and I'm delighted that's so."
The stories for "Abarat" are dreamt up as Barker paints, and written down only after the plot has been committed to canvas. In the first novel, Candy Quackenbush is growing up in Chickentown, Minnesota, yearning for more--which she finds, quite unexpectedly, when a man with eight heads appears from nowhere in the middle of the prairie, being chased by something really monstrous. And so begins Candy's epic adventure to the islands of the Abarat.
Barker is currently working on a number of horror movies as well as a big screen version of his first children's book "The Thief of Always." "Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War" will hit book shelves on September 21. Check out the books' official website for more info.
