Mike Fleming

jacklon_jkt_cvr Fox 2000 has acquired movie rights to The Secret Journeys of Jack London: The Wild, the first installment of a young adult supernatural adventure series by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon. Harper Collins just acquired the series and will publish the first volume in March, 2011. Golden and Lebbon will write the script. Pete Donaldson will produce through his Donaldson Media and Consulting label.

The story follows a young Jack London, before he became the author of Call of the Wild, White Fang and Sea Wolf. He treks the frozen north in the midst of the Gold Rush. He finds many perils in the Yukon Territory, and some of them are monstrous legends come to life. While movie deals are currently hard to come by, this is another example of a film deal for a genre-bending novel that adds a graphic novel sensibility to reinterpret historical figures or literary classics. Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov are teaming on Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, the Seth Grahame-Smith novel, Lionsgate and Natalie Portman are teamed on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Producers Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher just optioned Paul is Undead, the Alan Goldsher novel that re-imagines the heyday of the Beatles,–if John, Paul, George and Ringo were flesh-eating zombies.

Golden previously wrote Talent, a graphic novel currently in development at Universal. Lebbon’s story Pay the Ghost is being developed at Sidney Kimmel Entertainment.