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Netflix has picked up an untitled pitch that will team Oscar-winning animation director Patrick Osborne (Feast) with Black List screenwriter Emma Needell (The Water Man).
The plot for the pitch is being kept guarded, but it’s said to be in the vein of The Jungle Book or Wizard of Oz i.e. a big fantasy epic that revolves around a young boy who travels to a fantasy world in his dreams.
Anonymous Contents’ Brad Dorros, Tariq Merhab and Charlie Scully are producing the film. This is the second project that Anonymous Content and Netflix are teaming on after David Mackenzie’s Outlaw King, starring Chris Pine as the Scottish freedom fighter Robert the Bruce.
Osborne won the Oscar for animated short film with 2014’s Feast, which was followed a few years later by the similarly Oscar-nominated short Pearl. Before that, Osborne was a mainstay animator at Disney, working on Bolt, Wreck It Ralph, Tangled and the Oscar-nominated short Paper Man. He is currently in production on Nimona for Fox, working from a script by Marc Haimes and with producer Roy Lee. Osborne is also slated to direct the Jason Mantzoukas-penned Battling Boy for Paramount and Plan B, based on the Paul Pope graphic novel of the same name.
Needell previously wrote The Water Man, which made the 2015 Black List, but is currently in turnaround at Disney. David Oyelowo was attached to star and produce that film with Oprah Winfrey and Harpo Films.
Osborne and Needell are both repped by WME and Anonymous Content.
Deadline first reported on this project.
Edward Douglas | East Coast Editor
