‘Challenger Deep’ Adaptation Coming To Disney+ From ‘Toy Story 4’ Co-Writer
Neal Shusterman’s film and TV credits may not be much to write home about – he’s credited with the story on 1994’sDouble Dragonand wrote episodes ofAnimorphsandGoosebumps, among other things – but as an author, he’s a prolific writer who won the National Book Award in 2015 for his novelChallenger Deep. Now that book, which has a pretty wild premise, is getting an adaptation on Disney+ courtesy ofWill McCormack, one of the co-writers of this summer’sToy Story 4.Deadlinehas the story about the new Disney+ adaptation, though the outlet isn’t clear about whether this is going to be a TV series or a movie. Here’s the description of the plot:
Shusterman based the book on his son Brendan’s schizoaffective disorder and the book features Brendan’s illustrations throughout, so this is a deeply personal story for him. Anold Hollywood Reporter articlesays he was once set to write the movie version himself for 20th Century Fox, but now the project will be adapted for Disney+ by Will McCormack, an actor/writer who co-wrote the solid 2012 indie dramaCeleste & Jesse Foreverwith Rashida Jones and went on to co-writeToy Story 4with her as well. (The writing duoleftToy Story 4early in that film’s development, saying Pixar had a culture in which women and people of color’s voices were not given creative equality, but they both did enough work on the script to end up receiving credit in the final version.)
The story sounds like it could result in something visually dazzling, and reminds me a bit of the upcoming rotoscoped series for Amazon Prime Video calledUndone. you may watch the first trailer for thathereand read /Film managing editor Jacob Hall’s rave review of the first two episodes from this year’s San Diego Comic-Conright here. Here’s hopingChallenger Deepdrops our jaws in a similar way.
