You could argue that Spike Jonze’ sterling work on** Where The Wild Things Ar**e and the relative success of Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs led to this, but an adaptation of **Harold And The Purple Crayon **has been in the works for some time – it just has a little more juice thanks to the aforementioned kids-book-to-film releases.
Pajiba is reporting that the US kiddie classic is getting closer to the big screen, with Wild Things creator Maurice Sendak – a protégé of original Harold writer Crockett Johnson – acting as producer to ensure as much faithfulness as possible. Turning it into a movie (likely CG animated, staying clear of the current trend of CG/live-action blends) will be a challenge, since the original book has a simple story across 64 pages. Spike Jonze actually met Sendak when he was aiming to get his version of Harold made, but nothing came of it.
Still, if Wild Things could work, why not Harold, which tells of the titular hero and his magic crayon that can create objects just by drawing them. There’s plenty of scope for a fun story in that.
Nine writer Michael Tolkin had been the man to find it, but now apparently Shrek The Third/Date Night scribe Josh Klausner is re-writing his work. As to when we’ll see it happen? Who knows? If it really does end up as CG, it could be a few years yet…