Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman have joined forces with Steve Bing and Robert Zemeckis to bring the oldest written English language myth, Beowulf, to the big screen through the magic of performance capture.
Zemeckis will direct from the screenplay by Avary and Gaiman. The project will be financed by Shangri-La Entertainment, which is currently in discussions with Sony Pictures Entertainment to distribute all of its feature films. The film will be produced by Robert Zemeckis, Steve Starkey and Jack Rapke. Martin Shafer will serve as executive producer along with Avary and Gaiman.
Zemeckis is the acclaimed Academy Award-winning director of "Forrest Gump" as well as such major hit films as "Castaway," "What Lies Beneath," "Contact," the "Back to the Future" trilogy, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," "Romancing the Stone" and "Death Becomes Her."
Avary, who is an actual Viking descendant, won an Academy Award for his collaboration with Quentin Tarantino on "Pulp Fiction," and is the writer/director of such acclaimed films as "Killing Zoe" and "The Rules of Attraction." Avary is currently finishing the screenplay adaptation of the hit Konami videogame, "Silent Hill," for Producer Samuel Hadida and Tristar Pictures.
Gaiman is the Hugo and Nebula-Award winning author of such novels as American Gods and Coraline, and is best known as the creator of DC Comics' legendary Sandman. He wrote the English Language Script for the Miyazaki film Princess Mononoke. His first feature, "MirrorMask," directed by Dave McKean, premieres at the Sundance Film Festival.
His short film A Short Film About John Bolton was just released on DVD. Projects in development based on work by Gaiman include Coraline, which Henry Selick is writing and directing, and Stardust, with director Matthew Vaughn. Gaiman is writing and will be directing Death and Me, based on his DC Comics graphic novel Death: The High Cost of Living for New Line Cinema.
Beowulf was one of the tales that inspired J. R. R. Tolkien, a medieval adventure that tells the bloodsoaked tale of a Norse warrior’s battle against the great and murderous troll, Grendel.
Note that there is another Beowulf based movie, which has already completed filming. Gerard Butler stars in "Beowulf and Grendel," which you can read more about in our database .
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