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Warner Brothers Gets Bone Rights

by Kevin Powers
March 8, 2008
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Hollywood Reporter brings us news today that Warner Brothers has picked up the rights for Jeff Smith's popular, independent comic series Bone. The 55-issue series spanning 1991-2004 follows "three cousins from the Bone family who are small, white and bald humanlike creatures with big noses. The trio are run out of their hometown and find themselves in a mysterious valley where they are separated and hunted by other creatures. They are taken in by a girl named Thorn and her grandmother, and find out that the valley is threatened by an evil force called the Lord of the Locusts." Huh?

Bone is certainly, squarely a creative storyline dealing with both comedy and dark adventure pretty equitably. Smith apparently drew inspiration from J.R.R. Tolkien - Lord of the Rings, anyone? - among other fantasy and epic story tellers. Ok... I'm sort of getting it now. Despite the non-descript, Casper-like appearances of Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone, the story deals with pretty intricate and mature, modern-day scenarios. This juxtaposition does sound pretty interesting.

No word yet on what the rendering will be for the upcoming film, such as animated, CGI, live-action, etc.; but apparently an animated version was in the works at Nickelodeon Films, but that fell through. An account of this event was published back in 2000 on Boneville.com website saying "Nickelodeon still wants the movie option, but Jeff felt things weren't going well in terms of how quickly it was coming along (which it wasn't) and the changes that were being made to his and writing partner Dan Root's script. When the option ran out. Nickelodeon made another offer, but Jeff felt they'd all end up doing the same thing again (Sloooow development and studio changes to the script) and declined."

So I guess we'll see what Warner Brothers can do with the work and intended producer Dan Lin.

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Tait Howard

I have loved the Bone series since I was nine or ten and a few years back I bought to single volume edition, In terms of premise it does sound pretty strange but the story and the characters are incredible and by the end of the book I was sad to have to leave that world that Jeff Smith created. I don't know if it really NEEDS to be made into a movie but if they do it right it could be something great. I strongly suggest you read the book first! it really is worth getting.
Squiggly_P

Yes, definitely read the book, it's one of the best adventure comics I can think of. It starts off being sort of a weird comedy and by the end it's an epic fantasy action drama thing. If they don't go with an entirely animated film, i dunno how good some of the visuals will work, but there would be a LOT of CGI characters. The human cast is really quite small compared to the enemies and various other friendly characters. Even if it were live action, I'd say 75% of the characters would have to be CGI anyway. It might work, tho, if they take the same approach that Peter Jackson took with the LOTR series.