For the last couple of months, we’ve been reporting on the slow, steady development of The Impossible director Juan Antonio Bayona’s new film,** A Monster Calls**. The story on Felicity Jones joining a couple of weeks ago also made mention of Bayona courting Liam Neeson to star as the titular creature. It’s clear his overtures worked, because Screen International reports that Neeson is now signed on{
Novelist Patrick Ness is adapting his own novel for the screen, which follows what happens when a 13-year-old boy must deal with his mother’s ailing health and school bullies making his life a nightmare. Added to that, the yew tree in his garden keeps turning into a monster at night, which sounds like the recipe for massive future therapy bills.
But the creature that spawns from the tree isn’t as terrifying as he first appears, and actually has some wisdom to impart, which he shares via strange stories that contain life truths. Bayona has Jones set to play the boy’s mother, and is aiming at a late 2016 release date.
Neeson will return to our screens as a gun-toting outlaw in Seth MacFarlane’s** A Million Ways To Die In The West**, which is out on May 30 and just launched a new red band trailer. He’ll also show up in drama A Walk Among The Tombstones and action thriller Run All Nigh****t, with work set to start this year on Taken 3.