Paul Pope’s ‘Battling Boy’ Optioned by Paramount
Graphic artist Paul Pope’s Battling Boy has been optioned by Paramount Pictures for a feature film. The movie will be produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company according to Variety.
The book, to be published by First Second in spring 2010, is a “gritty tale centers on the son of a god or superhero who comes down from the top of a mountain at his father’s behest in order to rid a giant city of monsters.”
Publisher Mark Siegel first announced the project March 22, 2006, saying, “Yes, yes, yes, the rumors are true: Paul Pope is working on a massive, epic project for First Second — in full color and for young readers.
“Here’s a quote from Pope in this week’s Publisher’s Weekly Comics Week, just to whet a few appetites:
‘Battling Boy is aimed at kids and it’s coming out from First Second in 2007. It’s a kind of a fairytale kid Beowulf, or a Peter Pan with teeth. It’s set in a mythical city called Monstropolis, a city the size of a continent that’s overrun with monsters.’”
Pope, a winner of multiple Eisner Awards, recently wrote on his blog, “In Batman Year 100, I had room for a couple of long fight sequences, but I felt cramped even with 200 pages. This fight scene from Battling Boy alone is about 50 pages. It’s liberating to have no page restrictions. I wish [Jack] Kirby could’ve had 50 pages for one fight scene, imagine what he would’ve done.
“The extended cinematic sequence is one of the best gifts we’ve inherited from Manga.”