Re: [NEWS] "The Neverending Story" remake

 Hollyweird showing it is still talentless and lazy now does yet another remake.
      'The Neverending Story' Getting New Film Series Adaptation
    From 'Slow Horses' Banner See-Saw
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Falkor flies again!
     "The Neverending Story" - the beloved fantasy novel from late
    German author Michael Ende that was famously adapted into the
    cult 1984 film - is being revived for the big screen once
    more, with a new joint-venture partnership between Michael
    Ende Productions and prestige tastemakers See-Saw Films
    bringing the world of Fantastica back to cinemas over
     multiple live-action films.
     The news brings to an end the race for one of the hottest
    fantasy properties yet to be tapped for modern audiences.
    Variety hears that Ende's estate had been fielding interest
    from across the globe over the last few years, including from
    studios and streamers.
     See-Saw - no stranger to adapting well-known literature for
    screen having been behind features including "Lion" and
    "The Power of the Dog" and recent TV hits "Heartstopper" and
    "Slow Horses" - has now teamed with Michael Ende Productions
    to develop and produce the films. The new partnership has been
    granted "The Neverending Story" rights by Ende's executor
    Dr. Wolf-Dieter von Granau. Iain Canning and Emile Sherman
    will produce for See-Saw alongside Roman Hocke and Ralph
    Gassmann for Michael Ende Productions.
     First published in 1979, "The Neverending Story" became a
    bestseller in Germany and would be translated into 45
    languages, selling millions of copies worldwide. At the center
    of the story is the awkward but imaginative child Bastian
    Balthasar Bux who, while escaping from bullies, discovers the
    mysterious book "The Neverending Story," about the heroic
    Atréyu and his mission to save the magical realm of Fantastica
    - a world of dragons, giants, vast kingdoms and deadly swamps -
    and its ruler, the Childlike Empress, from being destroyed by
    force known as "The Nothing." But the more he reads, the more
    Bastian realizes he's not simply an uninvolved spectator and he
    soon finds himself transported into Fantastica himself, flying
    atop the luckdragon Falkor.
     "The story is both timely and timeless, and really has an
    opportunity to be told in a fresh way," said Canning, speaking
    to Variety from the offices of "The Neverending Story" literary
    agent AVA in Munich, Germany. "And part of the specialness of
    the book is that you can go back to it at different ages in your
    life and find different levels of meaning. So how wonderful that
    we have this opportunity to do a fresh perspective that will
    have new layers and meanings. We just believe that every
    generation deserves their own journey into Fantastica."
     "We've been completely overwhelmed with interest from the
    television and film industry in recent years," added Gassman,
    the AVA exec who works with Michael Ende Productions alongside
    Ende's longstanding editor and estate curator Hocke. "But it was
    only about four to five years ago when we felt it was right to
    go back to Fantastica with new, fresher attention. So then we
    looked at hundreds and hundreds of requests and just thought,
    let's see if we find a potential partner amongst them that is so
    compelling that they make us jump into the boat with them and go
    on this crazy adventure. But we knew we had to do it right and
    find the right partner, and luckily See-Saw was amongst them."
     For See-Saw, "The Neverending Story" - a much bigger and more
    elaborate piece of material than it's used to handling - marks
    the next step up for the London and Sydney-based company, first
    founded in 2008 and made famous in 2011 with its Oscar-winning
    "The King's Speech" (adapted by the late David Seidler from his
    own stage play).
     "Emile and I have always been very clear that, if we were going
    to move forward on our journey, it had to be something really
    special that we were passionate about and connected to
    emotionally, so when this opportunity came about we just thought:
    this would be so magical," Canning said. "Over our 15 years we've
    been very careful - whether it be for 'The King's Speech' and the
    audience that loved that or 'Lion' and the audience that loved
    that, or 'Heartstopper' or 'Slow Horses' - about making quality
    material and that audience responding to it. This is such an
    opportunity to bring all that skillset together and do a full
    quadrant spectacle of a film."
     "The Neverending Story" also brings Canning back to a conversation
    he had in See-Saw's very early days, before "The King's Speech,"
    when he was asked which project he would most like to produce.
    "I said, do you know what, I'd really, really love to adapt
    'The Neverending Story,'" he explains. "I was reminded of this
    recently, so it just feels in a way that the 15-year journey of
    See-Saw in terms of going from book to screen has led up to here."
     The next task for the newly-formed partnership of See-Saw and
    Michael Ende Productions will be to find the right creative team
    to bring the novel to life before packaging the project and
    seeking out distribution partners.
     "The journey, in many ways, starts now," Canning said. "There's
    been a lot of anticipation from people who love this story about
    what the next steps would be. For us, we now need to speak to
    writers and directors and hear their passion for the material."
     Much of the details about the production - including the exact
    number of films to be made - will depend on the creatives
    assembled. But Canning said that the wildly colorful locations
    Ende described in "The Neverending Story" - including the
    so-called Ivory Tower, Goab the Desert of Colors, Silver
    Mountains, Spook City, Silver Lake and the Swamps of Sadness
    (where Atréyu's horse Artax famously drowns) - lend the shoot to
    being an "international global production." He added that they
    would also look to maintain a connection to the book's heritage by
    shooting some scenes in Germany (much of the 1984 film was
    actually shot in the Bavaria Studios in Munich).
     Although producers may be looking for a modern day adaptation of
    "The Neverending Story," news of its return to screens lands
    during something of a renaissance for '80s nostalgia, led by shows
    such as "Stranger Things." It was actually "Stranger Things" that
    saw "The Neverending Story" recently back in the headlines, with
    Moroder's famed synth theme from the first feature adaptation - a
    film Ende famously disavowed for deviating too far from his
    original story - being performed on the show and subsequently
    going viral online.
     Alongside both Michael Ende Productions and See-Saw, executive
    producers on the new films will include the L.A.-based former
    Endeavor Content exec Lorenzo De Maio and Ende's executor von
    Gronau as well as See-Saw's CEO Simon Gillis and creative director
    Helen Gregory. Gillis and De Maio will spearhead taking
    "The Neverending Story" back out to the market once packaged. The
     rights deal was negotiated by von Gronau on behalf of Michael
    Ende Productions and Gillis and attorney Stephen Saltzman of
    Fieldfisher, on behalf of See-Saw.
     For Hocke, whose career began with Ende in the early 1980s and who
    worked closely with him for almost two decades until he died in
    1995, the new "The Neverending Story" adaption is not just the
    perfect opportunity to "make a new monument" for the author, but
    to celebrate the art and importance of storytelling.
     "We need stories like we need the air to breathe and water to
    survive. They give our inner worlds quality and with this quality
    we make decisions of quality. Stories make the world better," he
    said. "And 'The Neverending Story' is the story of all stories."
  <https://variety.com/2024/film/global/the-neverending-story-new-film-adaptation-see-saw-michael-ende-productions-1235944716/>