Recent General News

SCOOP: Charlie writes adaptation of "Orion and the Dark"

Here's something I haven't seen reported anywhere else, so... consider this a BCK exclusive? Charlie has written an adaptation of Orion and the Dark, Emma Yarlett's 2014 children's picture book. The book's description on the author's site:

Orion is afraid of more or less EVERYTHING, but there is one thing that scares him more than anything else... Join Orion on an adventure as he faces his BIGGEST and finds out it's... friendly! (Source)

You can see illustrations from the book on that site. In print it's 40 pages, but the screenplay is 122, so we're talking about an adaptation that is both very loose and very expansive--Kaufman's Orion describes himself as having "a Cluster C disorder, which includes feelings of anxiety, inadequacy, extreme worry about negative evaluation." Which is not very kids'-picture-book-like. It's a Kaufmanesque script if ever there was one, with stories-inside-stories and characters travelling through dreams and things looping back on themselves and whatnot.

Presumably this is intended to be an animated feature, because it's crossed a desk or two at Dreamworks' animation division. The first draft is dated December 2016.

More than that I do not know.