The list of projects that Tim Burton might tackle next is getting longer and longer. We could start making them up at this point, and nobody would notice. But according to a trusted source at The Latino Review, Japanese manga **Mai, The Psychic Girl **has been added to the Burton rolodex.
The comic series, written by Kazuya Kudo and drawn by Ryoichi Ikigami, is about a powerfully psychic 14-year-old girl being pursued by the shady Wisdom Alliance, which already has four psychic kids backing up its plan for world domination.
Mai was one of the first manga to be translated into English in the late 80s, pre-empting the Akira-led explosion in Western popularity in the 90s and beyond. Burton had a film in preparation once before (Sparks even finished a soundtrack) but it ultimately came to nothing. It's taken this long for Burton to re-acquire the rights from Sony.
"Burton is supervising the screenplay and has put this on the front burner" says LR's mysterious fount of knowledge El Taco. So let's recap: Burton now has Mai, the Psychic Girl; the Sleeping Beauty reworking Maleficent; the Johnny Depp-starring goth soap opera Dark Shadows; a stop-motion Addams Family; a full-length extension of his Frankenweenie short; and, maybe, the monster-mash Monsterpocalypse on his agenda. And he's supposed to be producing Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter with Timur Bekmambetov.
That's a lot of spinning plates. Which will he drop first?