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Spielberg fans, take note: 2011 will be a busy year for the filmmaker, according to Variety](http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118018676.html?categoryId=13&cs=1). The man has opted to direct War Horse, a film to be based on both a kid’s book and the subsequent stage play.
For a lot more detail on the project, which is obviously still in the early stages, we look to a Guardian piece from last December: “With its innovative use of life-size puppets to depict the horses of the first world war, the story of a young Devon farmhand who braves the trenches in an effort to find his beloved colt has proved a huge success on stage.” *Variety *describes it thusly: “Set against the sweeping backdrop of the Great War, storyline charts the extraordinary friendship between a boy and a horse who are separated but whose fates continue to intertwine over the course of WWI.”
So it went from a kid’s book (written by one Michael Morpugo in the early '80s) to a stage play … and now it’s tapped to be Steven Spielberg’s next directorial effort for Disney & DreamWorks. Richard Curtis (Love Actually) and Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) have been hired to turn the book and the play into a screenplay. For Mr. Spielberg’s part, his “next” film,* The Adventures of Tin Tin*, is presently scheduled for a December 2011 release – which means War Horse aims to be ready four months *earlier *than that? It wouldn’t shock me, considering we’ve had several years (1997, 2002, 2005) that offered us two Spielberg films.
It feels like it’s been a decade since Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, doesn’t it?