Brad Bird, the man (and two-time Oscar winner) behind giants like Ratatouille and The Incredibles (and ironically and more literally, The Iron Giant!), is set to direct his first live-action film.
This project, titled 1906, was rumored to be in the works back in February 2007, and Bird was in negotiations to direct back in June 2007 (see GoD Pixar feature), but now it has been confirmed.
The Hollywood Reporter states that the movie, which will be a studio tag-team between Warner Bros. and Disney/Pixar, will take place in San Francisco and revolve around a murder and the son of the victim, a college student, out trying to solve the crime and figure out who killed his father. In the process he ends up uncovering all kinds of deep, dark secrets within the city. All of this eventually plays into the big backdrop of the story, being The Great Earthquake of 1906.
Sounds like the complete other side of the world for Brad Bird to be stepping into and a weird project for Disney/Pixar to be co-producing, but I have a lot of faith here. I think that Bird is an amazing storyteller and an extremely talented director and it will be very interesting to see what he does with flesh and blood as opposed to computers and voices!
At the moment, Bird is rewriting the original John Logan script — which was based on the novel by James Dalessandro — and the film is looking at a possible 2009 release, but with something that sounds as big as this does just getting moving, who knows when we might actually get to see it.
What about everyone else? Are you sold?
With the big quake as the background this sounds fascinating.
I am a big fan of the Clark Gable film, San Francisco about the earthquake as well.
Good to see Bird tackle live action.
Comment by Jerry — March 16, 2008 @ 10:23 am
Hot damn! Bring it on! I’ll tell you what, between The Iron Giant and The Incredibles, I’m of the opinion that Brad Bird is God’s gift to animation. This story sounds totally sweet and in this man’s hands, I have the utmost confidence that we will get a righteous movie in return.
Comment by Bryan — March 16, 2008 @ 11:05 pm
This has grounds for a very interesting and detail oriented story. I know i’ve found his other films to have great attention to detail. Not to mention how well he worked with the eras that he used for The Iron Giant and The Incredibles. Transporting the audience back to the 1900’s should be easy for him.
Comment by Jen-Jen — March 17, 2008 @ 12:22 pm