Todd Berger to Pen 'Where's Waldo' for MGM (Exclusive)

This story originally appeared in the Dec. 9 issue of The Hollywood Reporter.

It's a task as tough as spotting a bespectacled adventurer in a sea of humanity.

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Screenwriter Todd Berger is taking on the job of adapting the popular children's book series Where's Waldo? into a film for MGM. Created by illustrator Martin Handford, the books feature Waldo, dressed in a red-and-white shirt and carrying a walking stick, hidden in plain sight amid crowded scenes.

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MGM picked up film rights in early November following unsuccessful efforts by Paramount/Nickelodeon and Chris Meledandri's Illumination Entertainment. The Paramount/Nickelodeon project would have featured Waldo, a grown man, traveling through various eras after accidentally activating a time machine, but MGM is keeping the story of its project under wraps.

Berger (Kohner, Kaplan/Peronne, Eclipse Law Group) is known in Hollywood for writing the puppet crime mystery The Happytime Murders, a Black List script that is in development at Lionsgate with Cameron Diaz attached. He's now finishing It's a Disaster, a comedy he wrote, directed and stars in with Julia Stiles, David Cross and Rachel Boston.