Bone Poster by Jim Lee! BONE FILM ADAPTATION ADDS KUNG FU PANDA DIRECTOR MARK OSBORNE. Originally published in 1991, Jeff Smith’s “Bone” has become something of a comic book classic, and it seems the popular series is finally headed to the big screen. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. Is developing an animated “Bone” adaptation with “Kung Fu Panda” director Mark Osborne at the helm. “Bone” follows three cousins – FoWarne Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone – who are run out of their hometown of Boneville and find themselves in a mysterious and magical valley. Even though the Bone cousins look like cartoon characters, Boneville is not all that different from our world. The valley, though, is more like something out of “Lord of the Rings, ” full of dragons and lost princesses and bawdy taverns. The cousins are scattered and bring their unique sensibilities to the people of the valley, who are waging a war with the Rat Creatures. Adam Kline will co-write the film with Osborne, while Dan Lin’s Lin Pictures produces with Animal Logic’s Zareh Nalbandian. Osborne will also executive produce. WB hopes to make a franchise out of the property, with the goal of developing “Bone” into a trilogy. “‘Bone’ is very special and unconventional because it blends elements together that you don’t necessarily expect – soft, little comic characters and epic high stakes fantasy adventure, ” Osborne explained. To carry this into the cinematic realm presents both an opportunity to represent what readers of all ages have loved about the series, while pushing animated storytelling into exciting and different areas. “As source material goes, Jeff’s epic is something of a unicorn; mythic, whimsical and pure in equal measure, ” added Kline. This is not the first time “Bone” has been eyed as a potential movie, but this is the most momentum the project has gotten since being picked up by Warner Bros. Osborne has been nominated for an Oscar twice, once for his 1999 animated short “More” and in 2008 for the first “Kung Fu Panda” movie. More recently, he was the creative force behind “The Little Prince, ” an adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s seminal novel, which was done as a French language stop-motion animated feature and was released in the U. Past adaptations of “Bone” have stalled because of creator Jeff Smith’s reluctance to allow changes to the source material, but Osborne has proved himself to be a director with a keen visual eye who can faithfully adopt material with a similar tone. Netflix To Produce’Bone’ Series. Netflix announced this morning that it has secured rights to the independent fantasy comic book series, Bone, with plans to develop an animated kids series. “I’ve waited a long time for this, ” said Bone creator Jeff Smith. Netflix is the perfect home for Bone. Fans of the books know that the story develops chapter by chapter and book by book. An animated series is exactly the way to do this! The team at Netflix understands Bone and is committed to doing something special. Bone, originally serialized in 55 issues from 1991 to 2004, tells the story of the three Bone cousins who end up in a fantastic valley that they must set free from the Lord of the Locusts. Smith, an animator himself who co-founded the Ohio studio Character Builders, was influenced in the creation of Bone by his appreciation of classic cartoonists and comic book artists like Carl Barks, Walt Kelly, and George Herriman. Dating back to the nineties, various studios have attempted to translate Bone into animation. Nickelodeon was among the earliest companies to become involved, and wanted to create a Bone animated feature. The deal fell apart over a differing creative vision between the studio and creator. Smith recounted in an interview how Nickelodeon tried to change the tone of the film by suggesting the addition of pop songs by Britney Spears and Nsync. Nickelodeon tried to turn “Bone” into an animated feature in the 1990s, but the deal fell apart when creator Jeff Smith refused to add pop songs by Britney Spears and NSYNC. He explains what happened below. DuPont: Any truth that they wanted a Britney Spears-style pop song? Smith: No, they didn’t want a Britney Spears-style pop song – they wanted a Britney Spears song in the film. And I like Britney Spears; I like pop culture; I like Madonna and Michael Jackson as much as anybody else – but I had a very different kind fo film that I was trying to make. And in the late nineties, I was really adamant that there would be no songs in the movie – because all animated feature films seem to have these awful formulaic songs. I think that’s a law somewhere – Animated film for kids? Put some crappy songs in it! Like when we pitched Warner Bros. While we were in Annecy. They took us out on a boat and were really wooing us – until I got to the point where I said, I need it in writing that there will be no songs. ” And it was pretty much, “Swim back to shore. [laughs] That was it. That was the end. But Nickelodeon did agree to no songs. So this pop-song thing was probably the turning point in the whole affair for me; this was about a year-and-a-half in. I mean, we had a great time with Nickelodeon – they were a lot of fun, the actual executives that we worked with. I really liked them. We would go to New York, where Viacom is, or we would go to Paramount, and we always had a wonderful time. But one day after lunch we sat down… And the executive there turned to me and said, Okay. We can get twelve million dollars right now if we put a pop song in the movie. So, Jeff – do you see somewhere in the body of the film where we could put a Britney Spears or an NSYNC song? Most recently, a trilogy of films was being developed by Mark Osborne for Warner Bros. Smith has previously stated a preference for a hand-drawn version of Bone rather than a cg translation, and with the project being set up as a series at Netflix, that seems like a distinct possibility now. Update: Smith has confirmed on Twitter that the series will be made in 2d. Bone became a mainstream hit after its publication ended, when Scholastic selected it as the launch title for its kids-and-teens graphic novel imprint, Graphix. Bone creator Jeff Smith got his’dream team’ for Netflix animated series. The inimitable comics series is still on its way. Netflix’s Bone animated series is still in the writing process, according to Jeff Smith, but he can say one thing for certain: The creative team behind it is exactly who he wanted. Polygon sat down with Smith for a long interview on the 30th anniversary of the first self-published issue of Bone (stay tuned for everything we talked about next week), but the topic of the Bone animated series naturally arose. The Netflix show was announced in October of 2019, but there hasn’t been much news since. Smith says that preproduction was delayed along with much of the entertainment industry’s productions in 2020, but that, ironically, that delay yielded unexpected benefits. “There were a couple of people that worked on some shows that I [asked about], ” Smith recalled, because I watched a bunch of Cartoon Network shows and some Netflix shows. Is this person around? Can we get this person? What’s this guy doing now? Or what’s she doing? And thanks to the pandemic, I was able to get everybody I wanted. I say thanks because there were people that were in contract, but we were delayed by like, eight or nine months because of the pandemic; [by that time] the contracts were up, and I got everybody I wanted. I don’t want to really say who they are, because I don’t want to steal Netflix’s thunder but, yes. I got my dream team of animation people, and I’m pretty excited about it so far. Bone first hit shelves in July 1991, and concluded its genre blending comedy/horror/high fantasy/all-ages adventure epic in 2004. Stay tuned for Polygon’s full interview with Smith, coming soon. PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT AND CHECK MY OTHER LISTINGS! If you don’t see it- ask! It MAY be in stock! We’ll be glad to put a listing up for you! Respond to messages in 24 hours or less!