Doris Burn’s inspirational and whimsical illustrated tale Andrew Henry’s Meadow was one of my favorite books as a young spud, so the news that the guy who made Wild Wild West is turning it into a movie makes my brain bleed a little.
Barry Sonnenfeld, who by my count has directed one exceptional film (that’d be Get Shorty) and a lot of inconsequential eye candy and outright stiffs, is helming Fox’s adaptation of the beloved children’s book (now finally back in print – if you’ve spawned, this should be on your offspring’s bookshelf). On the plus side, twitchy Scrubs star Zach Braff helped develop the script (with bro Adam) and is exec producing.
The imaginative book, which as a lad I paged through almost as many times as my old man’s “hidden” Playboys and that copy of Giant-Size X-Men #1 that I really wish I’d just bagged and boarded, follows a displaced middle child who occupies his time building various contraptions, which gets him into trouble. So he takes off to a field near his family’s new home, where he builds forts and meets other runaway children, creating his own little community.