Neil Jordan To Direct ‘Skippy Dies’
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Paul Murray’s novelSkippy Diesis “a sprawling boarding school comedy with a dark heart,” according to theGuardian, which reviewed the novel when it was published in the UK earlier this year. (The paper also called the book " one of the most enjoy able, funny and moving reads of this young new year.")
The such adoring press it’s no wonder a film development deal is in motion, and nowNeil Jordanis signed to write and direct.
DeadlineandVarietyboth report that Jordan is writing and directing the film,
How does this fit into Jordan’s existing slate, which includes Showtime’sRenaissance family dramaThe Borgias, with Jeremy Irons, and anadaptationof Neil Gaiman’sThe Graveyard Book? The Borgias is already going, but it seems like financing has been slow to come together forThe Graveyard Book, soSkippy Diescould well get going afterThe Borgias.
Here’s theAmazondescription of the novel, which will be published in the US at the end of August.
Why Skippy dies and what happens next is the subject of this dazzling and uproarious novel, unraveling a mystery that links the boys of Seabrook College to their parents and teachers in ways nobody could have imagined. With a cast of characters that ranges from hip-hop-loving fourteen-year-old Eoin “MC Sexecutioner” Flynn to basketball playing midget Philip Kilfether, packed with questions and answers on everything from Ritalin, to M-theory, to bungee jumping, to the hidden meaning of the poetry of Robert Frost, Skippy Dies is a heartfelt, hilarious portrait of the pain, joy, and occasional beauty of adolescence, and a tragic depiction of a world always happy to sacrifice its weakest members.
The book is relatively large (600+ pages) so some cutting and contracting will probably take place. But without having read it, I can’t offer any insight as to how that might happen. Reading the praise for the novel now, it is certainly on my reading list for the fall.
