According to the guys over at The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision blog, Spyglass Entertainment have just tapped Juan Jose Campanella with the task of directing HECK. So what is HECK? Well let me tell you!
“Heck,” described as a kids’ version of Dante’s “Inferno,” centers on a good boy named Milton Fauster who, with his shoplifting sister, dies in a freak accident and ends up in an unearthly reform school called Heck, where Lizzie Borden teaches home economics and Richard Nixon is the ethics teacher. Milton meets Virgil, a boy who has a map of the Nine Circles of Heck, and the two plot to escape the netherworld and its leader, the principal of darkness Bea “Elsa” Bubb.
A kid’s version of DANTE’S INFERNO? Is that even possible? And as if you couldn’t see this coming already, there’s a second book to the series that came out last year with a third planned for release next month. The first book in the series, HECK: WHERE THE BAD KIDS GO, comes from writer Dale E. Basye and illustrater Bob Dob. The second book is called RAPACIA: THE SECOND CIRCLE OF HECK and the third book reads BLIMPO: THE THIRD CIRCLE OF HECK. The deal right now is only for the first book in the series but there’s always room for more of course.
Ready for the juicy part? Spyglass Entertainment are planning on making HECK in the vein of BEETLEJUICE: ‘a big, effects-driven family adventure.’ Interesting. Does that mean there’s a glimmer of hope with this one? Spyglass are currently looking for a writer for the project so hopefully we’ll hear more about HECK soon. As always, be sure to keep it here for updates!