Joe Wright is making plans to adapt Neil Gaiman’s forthcoming novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane for the big screen, Deadline reports. Set up at Focus Features, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman will produce through their Playtone.
Set for release on June 18, the book is officially described as follows:
It began for our narrator forty years ago, when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed.
His only defense are three women on a farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duckpond is ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang.
Gaiman’s novels have led to big screen films like Stardust and Coraline with The Graveyard Book on the way from Ron Howard. Plans are also underway to bring to television both his iconic Vertigo comic book series “Sandman” and (also through Playtone) his 2001 tome “American Gods.”
“‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’ is a novel of childhood and memory,” says Gaiman of his tale. “Its a story of magic, about the power of stories and how we face the darkness inside each of us. Its about fear, and love, and death, and families. But, fundamentally, I hope, at its heart, its a novel about survival.
Wright is best known for films like Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, Hanna and, most recently, Anna Karenina.
