Peach Director Picks Tripods

James and the Giant Peach director Henry Selick is understood to be in talks with Disney's Buena Vista to helm the first of the Tripods Trilogy movies based on Lancashire-born John Christopher's novels. The project had first been eyed for the big screen by Frank Darabont and later by Speed screenwriter Graham Yost who was in talks with Touchstone Pictures. Now, Disney have expressed interested in the project with Selick as director. Set on Earth in 2193, the Tripods story consists of three books by Christopher - The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead and The Pool of Fire. A cross between Harry Potter and Star Wars but written a decade before the first Star Wars movie, the Tripod stories deal with teenager Will Parker, distressed about how boring his life appears and about losing his friend the next day when he turns 16 and undergoes the "capping" ceremony. The next day, a 20-foot space ship with three legs arrives and takes his friend away returning him with a metal cap in his head. Now, every adult is capped at 16 so they can offer no resistence to the Tripods. Christopher's stories were first adapted for a BBC TV series in the early 80s and in 1984 Columbia TriStar Home Video produced a movie called Tripods based on the stories directed by Graham Theakston and starring John Shackley, Jim Baker and Cari Seel.