Faber have announced that Warner Bros. Pictures has optioned feature film rights to Philip Ardagh's best-selling Eddie Dickens novels in a deal with Circle of Confusion, the production company responsible for the first The Matrix film.
In the US, the Eddie Dickens trilogy is published in hardback by Henry Holt and in audio by Random House?s Listening Library. The first Eddie Dickens book Awful End (A House Called Awful End in America) is about to be launched as a lead paperback for the autumn by Scholastic, US.
Jason Lust of Circle of Confusion is lined-up to co-produce the live-action project with Lawrence Mattis. Philip Ardagh comments, ?I?m delighted by the deal. Eddie?s adventures aren?t the easiest of books to bring to the screen because it?s they way they?re told as much as the action that makes them different, and I very much like Jason?s potential vision of Eddie?s world?.
This film deal comes at a time when Ardagh?s popularity is soaring in the UK and internationally and coincides with the launch of the first of The Further Adventures of Eddie Dickens, with the publication of Dubious Deeds by Faber in hardback in the UK in September.
Sales of the UK edition have now topped 250,000 copies and the Eddie Dickens titles are published in 25 different languages all over the world.
Stephen Page, Chief Executive of Faber and Faber, said ?Ardagh?s talent was obvious from the beginning and we always knew there was strong development potential with the right partner who would understand and be true to Philip?s extraordinary imagination.?
The Faber Press Release continues:
This film deal comes at a time when Ardagh?s popularity is soaring in the UK and internationally and coincides with the launch of the first of The Further Adventures of Eddie Dickens, with the publication of Dubious Deeds by Faber in hardback in the UK in September.
Sales of the UK edition have now topped 250,000 copies and the Eddie Dickens titles are published in 25 different languages all over the world.
Stephen Page, Chief Executive of Faber and Faber, said ?Ardagh?s talent was obvious from the beginning and we always knew there was strong development potential with the right partner who would understand and be true to Philip?s extraordinary imagination.?
It couldn't have happened to a better guy. The books are superb, and a real triumph for the man with THAT beard. Well done, Philip!