Favreau goes pre-historic

By Joshua Tyler Oct 18, 2005, 16:40 GMT

Swinging creative force Jon Favreau will fly houses around Hollywood this holiday season with his new family movie ‘Zathura’. After that he’ll head to Mars for an adaptation of the slightly less kid-friendly, classic pulp novel ‘John Carter of Mars’.

But even though he’ll be battling brutal monsters on the red planet, he’s still got something in mind for the family oriented audience he picked up with ‘Elf’. Sony Pictures Animation has announced that Favreau will write and produce the CG-animated film ‘Neanderthals’.

‘Neanderthals’ will be based on an original storyline created by Favreau, and that’s all we can tell you about it. According to the uncharacteristically glib execs at Sony, the plot is, “being kept in a cave under a large boulder protected by a mastodon.”

Sony says Jon is the perfect fit for the film because of “his love of animation”. An odd claim in light of Favreau’s well-known, adamant refusal to use CGI of any kind on his previous live-action films. I guess it’s all or nothing with him.

This is Jon’s second animated collaboration with Sony’s Animation division. He voices an animated beaver in Columbia’s upcoming September 2006 movie ‘Open Season’, a film not to be confused with Kevin Costner’s slightly less family-friendly, gun-toting western ‘Open Range’.