Potter Writer Looks At 'Curious Incident Of Dog'

[Thursday, August 1st, 2002]
Warner Bros. is negotiating to buy screen rights to upcoming Mark Haddon novel "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," with Steve Kloves ("Harry Potter") in early talks to adapt and direct.

Deal would mark the first made by producing partners Brad Pitt and Brad Grey since they joined forces and set a company at WB. They will be joined by David Heyman, who is producing Warner's "Harry Potter" series, the first three of which were written by Kloves.

That is quite a talent roster for a British novel that seems on the surface the simple story of an autistic 15-year-old's attempt to replicate the methods of his literary idol Sherlock Holmes and discover who killed his neighbor's dog with a garden tool. But that investigation is just a red herring amid the boy's coming-of-age adventure.

The book will be published next June in the U.K. and marketed both to adult and young adult readers.

Landing Kloves would be a coup. His last non-Potter script was "Wonder Boys," and he is very selective and deliberate about what he writes. He has been preoccupied adapting J.K. Rowling's novels into the first two "Harry Potter" films directed by Christopher Columbus, and recently completed the third installment.

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