Warner Bros. is adapting Ray Bradbury’s 1972 fantasy novel The Halloween Tree into a feature film, reports Deadline, adding that Will Dunn has been tapped to pen the screenplay.
“The Halloween Tree follows Tom and his schoolmates who begin to investigate the strange happenings in their small town on Halloween night.
“Their friend Pip is abducted by a powerful demon from the Land of the Dead. With the help of an unlikely ally, a mysterious figure named Moundshroud, Tom and his pals must journey into the Land of the Dead to save their friend.
“In the book, the boys with Moundshroud pursue their friend across time and space traveling to Ancient Egypt, Greece and Roman, and to places such as the Notre Dame Cathedral in Medieval Paris, and The Day of the Dead in Mexico. Along the way, they learn the origins of the holiday that they celebrate, and the role that the fear of death, ghosts, and the haunts has played in shaping civilization.
“The Halloween Tree itself, with its many branches laden with jack-o’-lanterns, serves as a metaphor for the historical confluence of these traditions.”
Bradbury wrote and narrated Hanna-Barbera’s 1993 feature-length animated version of the novel for television, for which he won the 1994 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in an Animated Program, adds the website.