Elle Fanning to Star in Neil Gaiman's 'How to Talk to Girls at Parties'

The ever brilliant author Neil Gaiman is known just as much for his short stories as he is for novels, and we've seen many of his works adapted to the big screen. Coraline, Stardust, Neverwhere (my personal favorite), and even his comics run on Sandman have either hit theaters or will in the future. That doesn't even count developing projects like the American Gods TV series or a film version of The Graveyard Book. Basically, Gaiman is a literary titan and Hollywood knows it, which is why his Hugo Award-nominated short How to Talk to Girls at Parties will be adapted next.

THR reports that Elle Fanning will take the lead in the film, to be directed by John Cameron Mitchell. It's an interesting move for Mitchell who has impressed with character films like Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Shortbus, and Rabbit Hole. 'How to Talk to Girls' is a sci-fi story about two high school boys, one shy the other a little more confident, who talk to three strange girls at a party only to learn they're not not your average females. Mitchell will co-write the script with Philippa Goslett and expand the short into a love story by having Fanning's extraterrestrial character exploring London with a schoolboy and punk musician. So kind of like a comedic Under the Skin?

Fanning can be seen in theaters now in Maleficent.If you're interested in reading How to Talk to Girls at Parties in its entirety, just check out Gaiman's official site.

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Neil Gaiman's 'American Gods' Optioned for TV Series, but not by HBO

It looks like Neil Gaiman's acclaimed fantasy novel American Gods is headed to TV, but it won't be with HBO as had been the plan a couple of years ago. Tom Hanks' Playtone and HBO had optioned the rights with hopes of developing it into a six-episode series, but the network quietly dropped it a few months ago. Disappointing news, to be sure, but there is hope now that FremantleMedia has acquired it.

According to Deadline, Gaiman will exec-produce the potential series with FremantleMedia, but there's nothing on whether he'll be writing the scripts. He had been planning to co-write the pilot with Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson. American Gods was published in 2001 and follows ex-con Shadow Moon, who exists in a world where gods and other mythical beings walk the earth. After taking a job protecting Mr. Wednesday, really Odin in disguise, Shadow finds himself in the middle of a war between the old gods and the modern ones.

Losing HBO is huge because they had the perfect platform and a prime Sunday night slot just waiting to be filled. Hopefully FremantleMedia can do American Gods the justice it deserves, and get it on a network where it can be easily found.

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Joseph Gordon-Levitt will Star and Direct Neil Gaiman's 'Sandman'

Just a few weeks ago a rumor surfaced that David Goyer was the latest to try and adapt Neil Gaiman's seminal comic book series, Sandman, to the big screen. And while that was big news, despite the fact many had been trying for years with no success, what was an even bigger deal was Joseph Gordon-Levitt's involvement as more than just an actor. Now Deadline reports Gordon-Levitt is in talks to not only star but make it his next directorial effort.

Gordon-Levitt confirmed the news on Twitter, saying...

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm incredibly honored to be working with David Goyer, Warner Bros, and @neilhimself on SANDMAN. #Prelude
— Joseph Gordon-Levitt (@hitRECordJoe) December 17, 2013

It's a pretty big move for JGL, coming off the smallish Don Jon which proved to be something of an indie smash earlier this year. He'll likely take on the role of Dream aka Morpheus, the personification of dreams whose story was chronicled brilliantly in Vertigo Comics' Sandman comic series beginning in 1989. Imprisoned for decades by a cult, Dream escapes and sets about rebuilding his kingdom and learning to evolve. The "prelude" hashtag seems to indicate we'll be exploring Sandman's origin, or perhaps Goyer's story will be based on Preludes & Nocturnes, which focuses on his imprisonment, escape, and quest for powerful lost objects.

If anything, this cements JGL as Warner Bros.' newest golden boy, right up there with Ben Affleck. Can't really blame them, and this is the perfect sort of cool comic book series, with relatively few superheroes hanging around, that fits JGL just as Sin City: A Dame to Kill For should fit him.

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Joe Wright to direct adaptation of Neil Gaiman's 'The Ocean At the End of the Lane'

Neil Gaiman has long been my favorite author, so any one of his many novels which gets the big screen treatment is going to get my attention. We know The Graveyard Book is being developed right now, and Tom Hanks' Playtone Pictures will be bringing American Gods to the small screen soon. It must be a relationship working out pretty well, because Hanks has picked up the film rights to Gaiman's upcoming book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

While that's already great news, it gets even better with word that Joe Wright (Atonement) is attached to direct it. Gaiman has always been one of the best at using words to create vivid, imaginative worlds, so teaming up with the visually creative Wright should be perfect.

This is still early days, so we don't know who will be starring or even who will be adapting the script. The book's official synopsis is below...[Deadline]

The Ocean At The End of the Lane is a novel about memory and magic and survival, about the power of stories and the darkness inside each of us.

It began for our narrator forty years ago when he was seven: the lodger stole the family's car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Creatures from beyond the world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and a menace unleashed -- within his family, and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it. 

His only defense is three women, on a ramshackle farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duckpond is an ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a fable that reshapes modern fantasy: moving, terrifying and elegiac -- as pure as a dream, as delicate as a butterfly's wing, as dangerous as a knife in the dark.

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