QT’s producer Lawrence Bender has signed up with Karen Barber for a two-pic deal with Nickolodeon movies to bring Jeff Stone's adventure book series The Five Ancestors to the big screen.
The deal marks a long-desired move for Bender from Tarantino to family films. As you do. The Five Ancestors will be adapted from Stone's series of which the first two instalments - Tiger and Monkey - were released last year, with the next, Snake, due in March.
Set in 17th-century China, the series follows five young monks who each specialise in a different form of kung-fu inspired by an animal. When a former monk rebels and attacks their monastery, the others flee across the country spreading messages of peace as well as having some good old-fashioned rucks along the way.
As part of the deal, Bender and Barber also will produce a CGI feature, Holy Cow, in which a young bull from Montana makes friends with a caterpillar who tells him about the sacred cows of India who are free. The pair head out to find the country, while trying to outwit a bunch of chickens.