Warner Bros. and Dan Lin are hoping to forge a new franchise after successfully bringing us the Guy Ritchie-directed SHERLOCK HOLMES movies. The new collaboration is on OTHERLAND, a sci-fi adventure based on a quartet of books by Tad Williams.
The studio has hired John Scott 3 to adapt OTHERLAND (presumably starting with the first book, CITY OF GOLDEN SHADOW). The writer made waves last year when it was announced that Timur Bekmambetov had purchased his zombie spec script MAGGIE, which had made the top 10 of the 2011 Black List. The project is currently in pre-production.
OTHERLAND: CITY OF GOLDEN SHADOW is a complex suspense novel of the near future, where virtual reality has expanded to encompass all aspects of society — and national, physical, and mental boundaries are limited only by the virtue or darkness of the imagination, offering an entirely new level of freedom to people in all walks of life. But a blood-chilling conspiracy involving the world’s most powerful individuals now threatens to shatter this world to its very core….
No director has signed on yet; as always, we’ll let you know more when we can.
SHERLOCK HOLMES’ Rachel McAdams