Those of us with kids or a childish disposition (put me down for both) may have already noted with some excitement that Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox is being adapted for the screen. And now a draft of the script, to be directed by Wes Anderson using stop-motion animation, has been leaked. (The curious can sneak a gander here.)
For all the praise heaped on Rushmore and the Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson is still a taste not acquired by many, and it's true that the whole exercise could go horribly awry. But, optimistic fool that I am, I can't help feeling there's something intangibly right about it. In part, it will be refreshing to see Anderson's baroque sensibility applied not to the overfamiliar features of Bill Murray but to animated wildlife. It will also be a delight simply to witness one of Dahl's finest yarns - in which the titular hero outwits the brutish farmers Bunce, Boggis and Bean - being transposed to the cinema.
And by the time we find out whether Anderson's pulled it off, another hyperinventive young American will have taken on another modern children's classic, as Spike Jonze does Where The Wild Things Are - here's a peek at what it looks like - due for release next autumn.
For both Anderson and Jonze, it's easy to see the appeal. Having made their names engaging a particular kind of adult with knowing whimsy and leaps of imagination, an audience of children unbound by notions of cool offer a far purer test of their vision. Few eight-year-olds are going to care whether the director is currently seeing Drew Barrymore or Karen O when appraising a movie, especially when it's an adaptation of their favourite book.
To me the strange thing about both Fantastic Mr Fox and Where The Wild Things Are isn't the fact they're being made by inveterate hipsters, but that, entrancing stories as they are, it's taken until now for either to be made at all. And should they turn out as good as they are on paper, you wonder whether they'll inspire a gold rush for those remaining kids' classics as yet unadapted. Because for all Hollywood's relentless mining of source material, they're still out there: Dahl's sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (the famously choleric Dahl denied at least one set of producers the rights); Eric Carle's timeless The Very Hungry Caterpillar; Russell Hoban's indelible The Sea-Thing Child; more recently, Oliver Jeffers's unaffectedly sweet How to Catch a Star.
Of course, the children's classic can be an albatross if handled badly. Think back, if you can find the strength, to those recent desecrations of Dr Seuss, The Grinch and The Cat in the Hat. But I suspect Fantastic Mr Fox will be classier. Without wanting to pressure Anderson, the happiness of any number of demanding children, their still-more demanding parents, and possibly the ghost of Roald Dahl (who was, let's face it, hard enough to please in life) depends on it.
