MGM picks up screen rights to Ray Bradbury’s “From The Dust Returned”

PanARMENIAN.Net - MGM has acquired the screen rights to From The Dust Returned, a Ray Bradbury collection of short stories that focuses on a mortal boy named Timothy who is adopted into a family of benevolent ghouls. Denise Di Novi and Alison Greenspan are producing, Deadline reported.

The book is set up with a series of vignettes, told to Timothy by his mummified grandmother, on the eve of a family reunion that takes place each Halloween. The stories reveal the eccentric ghouls that comprise his family. Mom and dad are loving vampires; teen sister Cecy is immobilized and bed-ridden, but she can teleport into the bodies of other mortals so that she can experience human emotions, Uncle Einar is a green-winged vampire who serves as a human kite for Timothy. To Timothy, who was dropped on their doorstep, it’s family. The book was published in 2002 and the short story The Homecoming was turned into a 2006 graphic novel.

Bradbury doesn’t option many of his books anymore, but entrusted this one to Di Novi and Greenspan after the producers developed The Illustrated Man at Warner Bros. That project once had Zack Snyder poised to direct a script by Alex Tse, until Snyder got busy with too many projects and had to drop out.