NEW YORK — Nickelodeon and Good Machine have beaten out several other bidders for the screen rights to “Sector 7,” an animated children’s book by David Wiesner. The film will be developed as a directing vehicle for Darren Aronofsky, who helmed “Pi” and just preemed his latest film, “Requiem for a Dream,” at Cannes. Aronofsky will produce with his Proteus partner, Eric Watson.
Deal was worth low- against mid-six figures; bidders had included Pixar and Itsy Bitsy. Wiesner is the Caldecott Medal-winning author of the illustrated kid books “Tuesday” and “June 29, 1999,” but what makes the option unusual is that the Houghton-Mifflin book contains 39 pages of illustrations and not a word of text. It tells the “Wizard of Oz”-like story of a boy ferried away into space, where he ends up in Sector 7, a cloudlike city.
The project was brought in by Good Machine development director Ciello Cerezo, who, Good Machine topper James Schamus said, “sniffed out an incredible movie idea from the book.”
Schamus said Good Machine is moving aggressively into family films. Project marks its second Nick collaboration, with an adaptation of the Peter Carey novel “The Big Bazhooley” in the works. Good Machine is also working on a remake of the Icelandic kidpic “Count Me Out” and is nearing production on the Fox remake of “Around the World in 80 Days.”
Deal was brokered by Joel Gotler of AMG with lit agent Dylis Evans.
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