French director Sylvain Chomet, whose "The Triplets of Belleville" was nominated for an Oscar for best animated film this year, has signed on to direct "The Tale of Despereaux" for Universal Pictures. Gary Ross is producing through his Larger Than Prods. with shingle partner Allison Thomas.

The script for the film will be based on the book "The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread," written by Kate DiCamillo. It has been on the New York Times best-seller list for 25 weeks since September, has sold more than 1 million copies and won the 2004 Newbery Medal for children's literature.

"Despereaux" is a fairy tale with three unlikely heroes -- a banished mouse who prefers reading books to eating them, a bumbling servant girl with cauliflower ears who longs to be a princess, and an unhappy rat who schemes to leave the darkness of the dungeon for light -- whose fates are intertwined with that of a princess.

No writer is attached to the project. DiCamillo did a treatment.

Universal's Mary Parent and Damien Saccani are overseeing.

Chomet, repped by ICM, wrote and directed "Belleville." In addition to the film's Oscar nom, Chomet received a best original song nomination for the film, which he shared with Benoit Charest. Chomet also received a best short film Oscar nomination in 1998 for "La Vieille dame et les pigeons" (The Old Lady and the Pigeons).