Sony Pictures Animation has acquired the movie rights to Janet Foxley’s children’s book Muncle Trogg.
Jane Startz, whose credits include family films as Ella Enchanted, Indian in the Cupboard and The Mighty, is executive producing while Kane Lee of Jane Startz Productions co-produces.
The buy is the first acquisition from newly installed Sony Pictures Animation president Michelle Raimo-Kouyate.
“Strong characters, relatable themes, a unique world and tons of inherent comedy: as soon as I read Muncle Trogg, I knew this would speak to the kinds of animated movies I want to make at Sony Pictures Animation,” stated Raimo-Kouyate.
The British book was the winner of the 2010 Times/Chicken House children’s fiction prize which seeks to honor unpublished authors. Trogg’s win led to a book deal which saw the book released in the UK and Australia; Chicken House/Scholastic will publish the book in the US and Canada in spring 2012.
The story is set in a community of giants who live a volcano and centers on a tiny giant (which makes him human-sized) laughed at for his size. He ends up saving his family in a story that involves a solar-powered dragon, a disgraced brother and a kidnapped child.
