Doug TenNapel’s upcoming Monster Zoo is the latest graphic novel to catch Hollywood’s eye. The Hollywood Reporter brings word that Paramount Pictures and Spider-Man director Sam Raimi have plans for a live-action adaptation that should call for a lot of CG effects animation. Raimi and Buckaroo Ent. partner Josh Donen will produce with Ellen Goldsmith-Vein of Gotham Group, which represents TenNapel.
Coming in May from Image Comics, Monster Zoo centers on a group of teenagers who must save the world when an ancient idol makes its way to a U.S. zoo and spirits begin mutating the animals. Paramount has not yet attached a writer to the screen adaptation.
TenNapel will serve as an exec producer on the film, along with Buckaroo’s Russell Hollander and Gotham’s Peter McHugh. Overseeing for Paramount is former Nickelodeon Films exec Dori Howard. Other TenNapel comics set up at film studios include Tommysaurus Rex at Universal and Creature Tech at Regency.
Gotham previously teamed with Paramount to bring kid lit favorite The Spiderwick Chronicles to the screen. Putting Peter Parker aside, Raimi is returning to his horror roots by directing Drag Me to Hell, which is currently in pre-production. The filmmaker came into prominence in Hollywood with his low-budget, cult-hit Evil Dead saga and has remained involved in the horror genre as a producer on such films as the American remake of The Grudge, Boogeyman and 30 Days of Night.
