It would appear that Neil Jordan is fixating on death in his future, since he’s not only developing films based on Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book and Joe Hill’s thriller Heart Shaped Box, but he also signed on to direct an adaptation of Paul Murray’s book **Skippy Dies.
Murray’s tome, which has landed on the Booker Prize long list, is not, in fact a tragedy about Australia’s kangaroo-shaped answer to Lassie. Nope, it’s actually the tale of two mismatched roommates in an Irish boarding school.
Ruprecht, a maths whizz and talented French horn player, rooms with Skippy, a boy whose mother is dying of cancer and who is being abused by the school’s gym teacher. As if his life couldn’t get worse, he then dies, and Ruprecht begins a series of science experiments to contact his friend in the afterlife. Jordan’s planning to write the script, so expect this one to take a while.
The pitch-black comedy sounds just about right for Jordan’s current cinematic mood, though while the book has won glowing reviews already, we’re frankly still more excited about The Graveyard Book.