The Graveyard Book: Everything We Know So Far About The Neil Gaiman Adaptation

Neil Gaiman's work has become ever-more-popular fodder for screen adaptations of late, and it's not hard to grasp why. The "Stardust" and "American Gods" author excels at painting vivid portraits of worlds where the fantastical quietly co-exists with the mundane, only to be uncovered by plucky, lively heroes like Coraline Jones. His books then blend these arresting concepts with captivating stories about people coming-of-age, finding love, or discovering a deeper purpose for their life.

Such is also the case with one of Gaiman's most widely-acclaimed novels, "The Graveyard Book." The winner of the Newberry Medal and Hugo Award for Best Novel, the 2008 book has been somewhat slow to make its way to the big screen, though not for lack of trying. In the past, the likes of Neil Jordan, Ron Howard, and even Henry Selick (the director behind the splendid 2009 stop-motion movie version of Gaiman's novella "Coraline") have all been attached to helm a film based on "The Graveyard Book," only for the project to fall by the wayside yet again.

Will this new attempt succeed where the others did not? Only Destiny of the Endless can say for certain, and they're keeping their lips sealed. In the meantime, here's everything we know about the latest iteration of the movie so far.

"The Graveyard Book" centers on "Nobody" or "Bod" for short, a young boy who is raised by the ghostly residents of a graveyard — along with the graveyard's caretaker, Silas, who is heavily implied to be a non-evil vampire — after his parents are murdered by a man known as "Jack." Over the years that follow, Bod has all sorts of encounters (some of them friendly, others not so much) with both the living and the dead as he comes of age in this most unusual environment. Meanwhile, the man known as "Jack" draws ever closer to finding out what happened to the child who miraculously evaded him years ago.

As you may well have gleaned, "The Graveyard Book" is Neil Gaiman's riff on "The Jungle Book," with Silas acting as the Bagheera to Bod's Mowgli and "Jack" serving as the Shere Khan of the story. Again, though, you can see the motifs from Gaiman's other work are here and accounted for, from the presence of the supernatural in everyday settings to the horror aspects and underlying melancholy that characterizes so much of his writing.

According to Deadline, Marc Forster is currently set to direct a film version of "The Graveyard Book" for Disney, with his producing partner Renée Wolfe producing through their 2Dux2 banner along with Gil Netter and Ben Browning. The script is now being written by David Magee, who previously worked with Forster on 2004's "Finding Neverland" and penned 2012's "Life of Pi" (both of which netted him Oscar nods). Magee also has a history with the Mouse House, having co-written the studio's "Mary Poppins Returns" and its upcoming live-action remake of "The Little Mermaid."

Along with "Finding Neverland," Forster is best known for directing films like "Monster's Ball" and "World War Z," and previously helmed "Christopher Robin," Disney's live-action 2018 film inspired by A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard's "Winnie the Pooh" stories. That movie was understandably a little too downbeat for some people's tastes, although I count myself among those who enjoyed its blend of whimsy and melancholy. If anything, "The Graveyard Book" calls for a similar approach, which gives me hope for the movie (even if, full cards on the table, I will most likely always wish we could've seen Henry Selick's version).