Neil Gaiman announces that DreamWorks Animation has bought the movie rights for his upcoming Young Adult novel Interworld.

(Source: www.neilgaiman.com)

There are one or two phrases and names that will get me perking up like a hero-struck schoolboy: one of them is movie, novel and graphic novel writer Neil Gaiman (on the opposite end of the scale: someone like Paris Hilton).

Of course, when you consider that Gaiman has multiple writing awards to his credit, including the Hugo, the Nebula and the Bram Stoker for his novel American Gods, and repeating that with Coraline, his best-selling children's book, you can understand my fanboy attitude towards the guy. And don't get me started on his classic graphic novel series Sandman or Good Omens, his apocalyptic comedy with Terry Pratchett.

Extra coolness points: his 2005 book Anansi Boys was nominated for a Hugo, but Gaiman requested it be withdrawn from competition since he wanted to give younger writers a chance to win the prestigious award.

He writes that his soon-to-be-released Young Adult novel Interworld, written with Michael Reaves, has "just been optioned by Dreamworks Animation, who want to make it into a movie."

Gaiman's work is hot in Hollywood right now, with Laika Entertainment doing a stop-motion adaptation of his best-selling Coraline (coming to theatres in 2008), Paramount bringing Stardust to movie theatres this August 10th, and his adaptation (along with Roger Avary) of the classic English poem Beowulf into a motion-capture movie starring Ray Winstone and Angelina Jolie. That movie hits the silver screen November 16th.

"Back in 1996 Michael Reaves was working doing adventure cartoon serials at Dreamworks Animation," says Gaiman in his blog. "He started talking to me about an idea for something that could be a potential animated story, and we began knocking ideas back and forth about what we'd want to see animated and why, and that became an idea about a boy who finds himself in the middle of a war between two equally powerful forces, who joins a super-team consisting of versions of himself from different alternate realities to try and maintain the consmic (sic) balance.

"We called it Interworld. (It was one of those placeholder names that stuck).

"We pitched it to executives, first at Dreamworks and then elsewhere, and watched them get increasingly confused and grumpy."

Gaiman's been used to that "confused and grumpy" look for a while now: he wrote the short story "The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories" (from his anthology Smoke and Mirrors) based on his miserable experiences trying to get Good Omens to the big screen.

"Somewhere in the winter of 1998 or 1999, Michael came up to my place, and we wrote it as a novel, doing our best impression of a Heinlein juvenile, because the treatments we did simply confused people and we were sure that if they read the novel they'd understand.

"And then we discovered the novel seemed to confuse them too, and we sighed and we put it away and got on with our lives.

"Last year, Michael reminded me of the book, and we took it out, dusted it off, sent it out to publishers and were happy when Harper Childrens wanted to publish it. They commissioned a lovely cover for it by James Jean.

"The early reviews were very positive. Film and TV people started contacting my agent about it. And now, a decade later, I'm delighted and slightly bemused to report that it's just been optioned by Dreamworks Animation, who want to make it into a movie...

"There's a moral there somewhere, you know," he says dryly, "but I have no idea what it is."

Neil, I think any kid looking for his/her first summer job can tell you the moral of this story. It doesn't matter how good you are: you can't get anywhere unless you have experience and you can't get experience unless someone takes a chance on you.

Of course, Interworld (the movie)'s success depends on how well Stardust and Coraline do in cinemas. If they both tank at the box office, Hollywood's love affair with Neil Gaiman may be over before it began.

Interworld (the book) comes out June 26th.

P.S. - That's the sort of moviemaking we're looking for from you, Jeffrey!

Fun Fact: Sandman has also been in development hell for many years. Gaiman read one proposal and called it "the worst script I have ever read."