‘The NeverEnding Story’ Reboot in the Works

1984’s ‘The NeverEnding Story.’ Photo: Warner Bros.

Preview:

‘The NeverEnding Story’ will return to screens in a new adaptation.
The 1984 original is a cult classic that many grew up with.
See-Saw Films, which made ‘The King’s Speech’ among others, is developing it.

Most famous for being a key part of eighties’ kids childhood (who among us can forget the heart-rending image of a horse drowning in a swamp as part of a movie designed to entertain children?), ‘The NeverEnding Story’ might also be famous for the joke about someone threatening legal action because it, you know, ended.

But now, because every piece of pop culture somehow comes spinning back around on the giant wheel of remakes (and because there was added renewed interest thanks to the use of its music in ‘Stranger Things’), the rights to adapt Michael Ende’s original novel are now in the clutches of See-Saw Films, the team behind ‘The King’s Speech’ on the big screen and ‘Slow Horses’ on the small, and they have big plans going forward.

What’s the plot of ‘The Neverending Story’?

1984’s ‘The NeverEnding Story.’ Photo: Warner Bros.

Michael Ende’s 1979 kid-friendly fantasy novel became a bestseller in Germany and ended up translated into 45 languages, selling millions of copies worldwide.

We’re introduced to shy but imaginative child Bastian Balthasar Bux who, while escaping from bullies, discovers the mysterious, titular tome about the heroic Atréyu and his mission to save the magical realm of Fantastica — a world of dragons, giants and deadly swamps — and its ruler, the Childlike Empress, from being destroyed by force known as “The Nothing.”

Yet the more he reads, the more Bastian realizes he’s not simply an uninvolved spectator and he soon finds himself transported into Fantastica himself, flying atop the luckdragon Falkor.

The movie version (directed by Wolfgang Petersen) was not to Ende’s taste, though his disapproval didn’t stop production of two sequels and a couple of short-lived TV adaptations.

“A boy who needs a friend finds a world that needs a hero in a land beyond imagination!”

PG1 hr 42 minJul 20th, 1984

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Who is working on the new ‘The Neverending Story’?

1984’s ‘The NeverEnding Story.’ Photo: Warner Bros.

Right now, all the film has is rights holders and producers; the process of finding filmmakers and cast to bring it to life, and a distribution home, is only now starting.

Iain Canning and Emile Sherman of See-Saw are working with Roman Hocke and Ralph Gassmann, who run Michael Ende Productions, the estate of the author.

Here’s what Canning told Variety about the appeal:

“The story is both timely and timeless, and really has an opportunity to be told in a fresh way. And part of the specialness of the book is that you can go back to it at different ages in your life and find different levels of meaning. So how wonderful that we have this opportunity to do a fresh perspective that will have new layers and meanings. We just believe that every generation deserves their own journey into Fantastica.”