Artemis Fowl Film Finally Greenlit

All you Artemis Fowl fans, get ready– according to a recent press release, Disney Studios just greenlit a project to bring Artemis to the silver screen.

Yup.

After all these years, we’re finally getting an Artemis movie. So who is set to make this film? Go under the cut for details on production.

Producer Harvey Weinstein is leading the front along with Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro. The script is being written by the same man who wrote the script for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

The series itself has sold “21 million copies in print in 44 languages worldwide,” according to the press release. It was one of the first to become really popular in YA, back when YA was just beginning to gain ground as a literary genre. Though the popularity of the series has waned over time (and subsequent books), the story still holds a place of honor in the hearts of many who read it back in 2001.

For those of you who didn’t grow up with the book series, the plot of Artemis Fowl looks something like this (from the press release):

Artemis Fowl is about a 12-year-old Artemis who is a millionaire, a genius – and above all, a criminal mastermind. But Artemis doesn’t know what he’s taken on when he kidnaps a fairy (Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon Unit) to harness her magic to save his family. These aren’t the fairies of the bedtime stories  – they’re dangerous.

The story travels between the real world as we know it (Artemis’ world as an Irish crime lord, tracking down the fairies’ holy text the Book of the People from Ho Chi Minh city, the decaying luster of the Fowl Manse) and the underground city of the fairies, whose civilization is much less fae and much more technological than the term “fairy” might suggest.

Though the story has some problematic elements (Artemis’ mother went insane upon her husband’s disappearance and lives in the mansion in her altered mental state, semi-filling the absent mother trope) but also does some things very well– Artemis is a child, Holly is a grown woman with a law enforcement career and capable skills, and the ruthless tactics of (what is essentially) the fairy SWAT team are very reminiscent of something you’d see the FBI or the CIA pull in a series that wasn’t targeted towards children.

With regards to the production and his team, Weinstein had this to say:

I feel as though everything is coming full circle considering Bob DeNiro and Jane Rosenthal brought me this book while I was still at Miramax and within hours I told them I wanted the rights to the film… This is a special project for me because my children absolutely love this book. This story is for everyone and there is no one better than Disney to make a film that will excite people young and old.

There were whispers of a film back in the early 2000s and we soon learned that the film project was deep in the mires of development hell and was doomed never to happen; so it’s welcome news that this is actually going to be made. It would be an interesting film to watch, too– the visuals of the fairy world and the Fowl mansion would be awesome, and I really do want to see Juliet break out those wrestling moves in live-action.

Also, just a casting suggestion: Daniel Craig as Butler. That is all.

(image via eoincolfer.com)

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