MGM has acquired the screen rights to Robert C. O'Brien children's book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH , and has Ice Age 5 writer Michael Berg attached to pen the screenplay.

Deadline reports that the movie adaptation will be done as a live-action/CGI hybrid, à la The Smurfs and Alvin and the Chipmunks. The site adds that the film will be "an origin story in which an imperiled mouse protagonist befriends a comical crew of lab rats as they turn hyper-intelligent. They escape a secret laboratory and become the great minds of vermin civilization, forced to outwit the humans hot on their tails."

MGM's Senior VP Cassidy Lange will oversee the project, with Daniel Bobker and Ehren Kruger producing. Currently, the plan is to turn NIMH into a franchise.O'Brien's original novel spawned two book sequels, as well as a 2D animated film, The Secret of NIMH, directed by Don Bluth in 1982. (That film was also produced by MGM.)

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