Gil Kenan – the precociously-talented director of Monster House – may have entered the realm of live-action with his upcoming City Of Ember, but he must have missed the possibilities afforded to him by performance capture animation.
For the 31 year-old director (see what we mean about precocious?) has signed on to direct Airman, based on a kids’ book by Eoin Colfer. And to do so, he’ll be returning to, well, you know what.
And helping him along will be his mentor and the Mack Daddy of performance-capture animation, Robert Zemeckis, who will produce, along with his ImageMovers partners, Jack Rapke and Steve Starkey.
Airman is not an Artemis Fowl novel, incidentally, but an entirely original novel from Colfer, mixing elements of fantasy, sci-fi and swashbucklers. It concerns a young man called Conor Broekhart, who is born in a hot air balloon, to a family close to the king. When he grows up, his mentor – and the king – are murdered and Conor is imprisoned. He escapes after two years and must decide whether to avenge the murders, or to run away. We haven’t read the book, we’ll admit, but we’d be surprised if he runs away. Heroes don’t tend to run away.
Kenan so far has displayed a wonderful capacity for conjuring eye-catching visuals, allied to an impish sense of humour, so let’s hope that Airman brings out the best in him. But it’s early days yet, as no writer is currently attached.