Paranorman director Sam Fell knows a thing or two about spooky stories. And he’s sticking with tales of the other side for his next film, but switching to live action. Fell has Asa Butterfield, Gillian Anderson, Jemaine Clement and Stanley Tucci set to star in **Croak{
Written by Lucy Moore, and called Teen Reaper earlier in its development, the plot finds Butterfield as a young Grim Reaper straddling the worlds of the living and the dead as he shepherds souls on to the afterlife. Not much else is known about the film, as it’s being kept mostly under wraps, but Fell and his producers will soon be spilling more details when they take the project to next month’s American Film Market to drum up distribution business.
Butterfield is inheriting the role from Kodi Smit-McPhee, who voiced the lead in Paranorman, and who we can only assume has dropped out for scheduling reasons.
Anderson, last seen in Robot Overlords, will be back in her iconic role as Scully for the X-Files revival due on US TV screens in January. She’s also at work on period drama Viceroy’s House. Butterfield has Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children out next year, with Tucci returning to The Hunger Games for Mockingjay – Part Two (arriving on November 19) and Clement part of the cast for Steven Spielberg’s The BFG, which will be in UK cinemas on July 22.