Dreamworks Picks Up Neil Gaiman's 'Interworld'

It seems that you can't turn around without bumping into another Neil Gaiman news item, some of which seem like downright wishful thinking. On the author's personal site, he announced that Dreamworks Animation has optioned his upcoming novel, Interworld. Written by Gaiman and Michael Reaves, the story centers on Joey, a man with the ability to travel into different dimensions, making him "prey to two terrible forces-armies of magic and science who will do anything to harness his power to travel between dimensions. When he sees the evil those forces are capable of, Joey makes the only possible choice: to join an army of his own, an army of versions of himself from different dimensions who all share his amazing power and who are all determined to fight to save the worlds".

Gaiman's work is probably familiar to fans of fantasy fiction, and Reaves has made a name for himself writing scripts for TV, ranging from The Father Dowling Mysteries to Star Trek. Reaves and Gaiman had originally pitched the project to studios back in 1996, when Reaves was working on a Dreamworks animated serial, but the project failed to generate much enthusiasm. In 1999, the two decided to turn the story into a novel and sold it to Harper Collins last year -- so if you are keeping track, Interworld has gone from a movie idea that turned into a book, and then went back to being a movie. It might just be me, but it seems that when it comes to Gaiman and the movies, nothing is ever easy.