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Fox Animation Picks Up 'The Story of Ferdinand' for the Big Screen

by Ethan Anderton
February 18, 2011
Source: Vulture

With the story of Mr. Popper's Penguins heading to the big screen with Jim Carrey leading the way, it looks like another beloved, children's classic will be heading to the big screen. Vulture reports Fox Animation and Ice Age franchise director Carlos Saldanha will be bringing the 1936 children's book The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf (with illustrations by Robert Lawson). The story follows a tame, quiet , pacifist bull who wants nothing more than to sit under a tree and smell flowers. But when a roaming bee comes by and gives him a little sting, the bull finds himself going wild as five men are looking for the one crazy, tough bull. Uh-oh!

Suddenly Ferdinand finds himself in the bullfights of Madrid and in a whole heap of danger. The timing for this project couldn't be better as the book is about to celebrate its 75th anniversary and Saldanha has his film Rio coming to theaters in April. Though the book has already sold over 4 million copies in the U.S. alone, the popularity of the book seems to have soared (by about 100,000 copies) even more after its brief appearance in The Blind Side as a story that Sandra Bullock reads to her kids and Michael Oher. Disney once adapted the book as an Oscar winning short in 1938, but since then the story hasn't seen another film adaptation. Anyone interested?

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