Walden Media has optioned the animated the animated pitch, TORTOISE AND HIPPO, according to VARIETY. SHREK co-writer Roger S.H. Schulman will write the script. The film will be a combination of live action and photo-real CGI animation.
Relevant Ent.'s Mike Menchel, who pitched the idea, will produce the project. The story came when one of his daughters showed him an unusual wire service photograph taken at a wildlife sanctuary showing the close bond between a 100-year-old tortoise and a baby hippo that was rescued from the Indian Ocean after December's tsunami. The story chronicles the cranky old tortoises begrudging initial relationship with the baby hippo because its a chick magnet. Eventually the tortoise comes to love the hippo and helps it along its dangerous journey back to Africa.
"It was a perfect movie for us at the perfect time," Walden ceo Cary Granat said. "It allows us to continue the work we've done that brings photo-real creatures to a new level of reality, and it is timely to have a story about adoption, taking responsibility for others and putting self-interest to the side and embracing someone else in time of need."
Relevant partner Jonathan Baruch will shepherd the picture with Walden execs Alex Schwartz, Jackie Levine and Jared Mass.
Relevant has already made a publishing deal for a tie-in book with Debra Dorfman, president of Grosset/Dunlap, the children's division of Penguin Books. Dorfman is married to Relevant partner Rick Dorfman.
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Animation World Network
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