Back in 2015, producer Scott Rudin was quick to snap up the rights to author Kazuo Ishiguro's just-published historical fiction The Buried Giant. The movie languished in development limbo but in a recent interview with The Telegraph about his Oscar-nominated Pinocchio, Guillermo del Toro mentioned that he was planning to adapt the book himself in stop-motion form as his follow-up. He's now officially confirmed that he's making the new movie for Netflix.
Ishiguro's book takes place in a mythologised fifth-century Britain, in which an old couple decide to undertake a journey to find the son they have not seen for several years. Hindering their seemingly simple quest, however, is a mysterious mist enveloping the land, causing amnesia in all its inhabitants. The trolls, ogres, dragons and giants are also something of a problem.
"The Buried Giant continues my animation partnership with Netflix and our pursuit of stop-motion as a medium to tell complex stories and build limitless worlds," del Toro says in a " It is a great honor and greater responsibility for me to direct this screenplay which Dennis Kelly and I are adapting from Kazuo Ishiguro’s profound and imaginative novel.” Kelly, of course, most recently wrote Netflix's Matilda musical.