Matt Reeves, Gary Whitta to Adapt ‘Mouse Guard’ for Film 

Fox has optioned the best-selling work by David Petersen that will be penned by Whitta, the screenwriter of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Reeves, the director of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes andCloverfield, will produce the adaptation via his 6th & Idaho banner, along with Mouse Guard publisher Boom! Studios’ Ross Richie and Stephen Christy. Reeves is not intending to helm the project.

The studio is looking to make a live-action movie utilizing the performance-capture technology pioneered for Fox’s acclaimed Apes franchise as well as technology used by Disney’s live-action animal tale The Jungle Bookto bring the Mouse Guard world to vivid life.

Created, written and illustrated by Petersen, Mouse Guard tells of anthropomorphic mice set in medieval times, focusing on a brotherhood of mice that is sworn to protect the common folk. Or rodent, as it were.

The series, which just celebrated its 10th anniversary and hails from Boom!’s imprint Achaia, has almost one million copies in print and has been translated into 10 languages. It is considered one of the most successful independent comic book franchises of the last decade, with three volumes of the main series, three volumes of a spinoff series Mouse Guard: Legend of the Guard and a Mouse Guard Roleplaying Game published. A new series titled Mouse Guard: The Weasel Wars is expected to launch next year.

Adam Kassan will executive produce for 6th & Idaho, and Boom!’s Adam Yoelin and David Petersen will co-produce. Mark Roybal will oversee for the studio.

Boom! is prepping its first production, The Empty Man, which will star James Badge Dale and is set to begin shooting in August. The company, which enjoys perhaps the largest IP library outside of Marvel and DC, also has adaptations of its hit comics Lumberjanes and James Wan’s Malignant Man in development at Fox.

Whitta, who counts the Denzel Washington thriller The Book of Eli amongst his credits, is repped by UTA, Circle of Confusion and Behr & Abramson; Reeves is repped by CAA, 3 Arts and Jackoway Tyerman; Boom! is repped by Matt Saver; and Petersen is repped by attorney Matt Sugarman.

Source: Matt Reeves, Gary Whitta to Adapt ‘Mouse Guard’ for Film (Exclusive)