Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros is negotiating a rights deal to use The Guinness Book Of World Records as the basis for an action adventure film. The film has been set up at WB-based Thunder Road, and the studio has hired Danny Chun (The Office) to write the script. Thunder Road’s Basil Iwanyk will produce with Motion Theory’s Sean Sorensen and Mathew Cullen.

It’s going to take some work to find a narrative arc, but there is certainly global name recognition as the Guinness Book Of World Records has sold a ton of books. The goal is to blow out the accomplishments of record-setters and turn it into an action movie with global appeal. Hatched by the Guinness Brewing Company in Ireland after an executive there tried to settle an argument over whether Europe’s fastest bird was the golden plover or the grouse, the brew maker realized a book that chronicled records would become popular. Achievements range from the star with the biggest box office (Samuel L. Jackson) to peculiar ones like longest nose, longest fingernails and the most tattoos and piercings.

This isn’t the only one of its kind. Paramount has tried more than once to turn Ripley’s Believe It Or Not into a big tent pole. The studio was weeks away from starting production in China on a $175 million film with Tim Burton directing Jim Carrey as columnist Robert Ripley before pulling the plug in 2007. The studio later engaged Eric Roth to rewrite the earlier version scripted by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski.