New film to be adapted from graphic novel that delves into the mind of ‘The Sandman’ writer himself as he explores fragmented childhood memories, including his visits to an osteopath who once worked for Al Capone.
It really is the Neil Gaiman decade. The prolific author is set to have yet another one of his works adapted for film, this time with Violent Cases, a graphic novel co-written with Dave McKean. Variety recently revealed that Ben Kingsley (Gandhi, Hugo) is already set to star in the feature film adaptation. Helming the project is The Girl with All the Gifts creative team, consisting of writer Mike Carey (Lucifer), director Colm McCarthy (Black Mirror), and producer Camille Gatin (The Tutor).
The original graphic novel delves into the mind of Neil Gaiman himself as he explores fragmented childhood memories, including his visits to an osteopath, played by Kingsley, who once worked for Al Capone. The series begs the question, “How do stories, memories, and violence intersect, and how does our past affect our present?”
“I’m delighted to be working with this fantastic team on Violent Cases, which for me is about the power and importance of storytelling, about how we negotiate the shadows cast by the father figures in our lives and above all, about the right of our inner child to be heard,” said Kingsley in a statement to Variety.
Of the project, McCarthy said, “Violent Cases is a wild, hallucinatory, yet thought provoking and emotional comic. It’s so exciting to build a film from this incredible, genre-defining work.”
Carey added, “As an aspiring writer back in the late 80s reading Violent Cases was a revelation and a joy for me. Its darkness and playfulness defined a new approach to storytelling. Thirty-five years on, it’s still unique, and bringing it across into a new medium feels like discovering it again for the first time. Neil Gaiman redefined serialized comics with The Sandman, but Violent Cases was his and Dave McKean’s early masterpiece. It’s thrilling to be introducing it to a new audience and taking its visual lyricism into a new medium.”
Edmund Kingsley will produce for Lakesville Productions, while Gatin and McCarthy will produce for Scary Monster, and Carlos Enrique Cuscó and Ari Taboada for Foton.Pictures.
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