Warner Bros. and a pair of top-tier production banners are in the early stages of a reboot of the 1980s children’s fantasy classic, reports the trades.
The Kennedy/Marshall Co. (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”) and Leonard DiCaprio’s shingle Appian Way are in discussions with Warners about reviving the 25-year-old franchise with a modern spin. The studio recently acquired rights to the property, clearing the way for a potential remake.
Born out of a German-language novel by Michael Ende, the film centers on a boy named Bastian Balthazar Bux who discovers a parallel world in a book titled “The NeverEnding Story.” As the boy, a loner, delves deeper into the book, he increasingly finds his life intertwined with the plot of the novel, in which a hero in the land of Fantasia must save the universe on behalf of an empress.
The new film which original producer Dieter Geissler also will produce and Sarah Schechter and Jesse Ehrman will oversee for Warners — will examine the more nuanced details of the book that were glossed over in the first pic.
Wolfgang Petersen directed and Neue Constantin produced the original for Warners, which earned a respectable $20 million when it was released in 1984. The film has had a long life on home video and an even larger influence on popular culture, prefiguring Harry Potter and other present-day children’s fantasies.
A sequel directed by George Miller came out in 1990 and earned $17 million; a third movie followed in the U.S. in 1996 but quickly went to video.
Along with the remake of the film, I am looking for a producer for The Neverending Story on stage at Javits Convention Center in New York City. Both an opera and ballet score have been composed by Siegfried Matthus. Please refer to my website for more details by following the link below.
http://www.the-neverending-story.com