‘The Neverending Story’ will have a new film series adaptation

Falkor flies again!

“The Neverending Story,” the beloved children’s fantasy novel by late German author Michael Ende that was adapted into the 1984 cult film, is being revived for the big screen once again, with a new partnership between Michael Ende Productions and the Prestigious tastemakers See-Saw Films bring the world of Fantastic back to theaters through multiple live-action films.

The news ends the race for one of the most popular fantasy properties yet to be tapped for modern audiences. Variety He learns that Ende’s estate has garnered interest from around the world in recent years, including studios and streamers.

See-Saw, who is no stranger to adapting well-known literature for the screen, having been behind films such as “Lion” and “The Power of the Dog” and the recent television hits “Heartstopper” and “Slow Horses”, now has partnered with Michael Ende Productions. to develop and produce the films. Ende’s executor, Dr. Wolf-Dieter von Granau, has granted the new association the rights to “The Neverending Story.” Iain Canning and Emile Sherman will produce for See-Saw alongside Roman Hocke and Ralph Gassmann for Michael Ende Productions.

First published in 1979, “The Neverending Story” became a bestseller in Germany and was translated into 45 languages, selling millions of copies worldwide. At the center of the story is the clumsy but imaginative boy Bastian Balthasar Bux who, while escaping from bullies, discovers the mysterious book “The Neverending Story”, about the heroic Atréyu and his mission to save the magical kingdom of Fantastica, a world of dragons, giants, vast kingdoms and deadly swamps, and their ruler, the Childlike Empress, from being destroyed by the force known as “The Nothing.” But the more he reads, the more Bastian realizes that he is not simply an oblivious spectator, and soon he finds himself transported to Fantastic, flying on the lucky dragon Falkor.

“The story is both timely and timeless, and it really has the opportunity to be told in a new way,” Canning said, speaking with Variety from the offices of the AVA publisher of “The Neverending Story” in Munich, Germany. “And part of what’s special about the book is that you can come back to it at different ages in your life and find different levels of meaning. So how wonderful that we have this opportunity to create a new perspective that will have new layers and meanings. We simply believe that every generation deserves its own trip to Fantástica.”

“In recent years we have been completely overwhelmed by interest from the film and television industry,” added Gassman, the AVA executive who formed Michael Ende Productions with former Ende editor and estate curator Hocke. “But it was only about four or five years ago that we felt it was right to return to Fantastica with new, fresh attention. So we looked at hundreds and hundreds of applications and thought, let’s see if we can find a potential partner among them who is so compelling that they’ll make us jump on the boat with them and go on this crazy adventure. But we knew we had to get it right and find the right partner, and luckily, See-Saw was among them.”

For See-Saw, “The Neverending Story” – a much larger and more elaborate piece of material than he is used to handling – marks the next step for the London and Sydney-based company, first founded in 2008 and who became famous in 2011 with her Oscar-winning “The King’s Speech” (the late David Seidler’s adaptation of his own play).

“Emile and I have always been very clear that if we were going to move forward on our journey, it had to be something really special that we were passionate about and emotionally connected to, so when this opportunity arose we simply thought: this would be so magical.” Canning said. “Over our 15 years we’ve been very careful, whether it’s ‘The King’s Speech’ and the audience that loved it or ‘Lion’ and the audience that loved it, or ‘Heartstopper’ or ‘Slow Horses,’ when it comes to making quality material and having the audience respond to it. “This is a great opportunity to bring all those skills together and make a complete cinematic spectacle.”

“The Neverending Story” also brings Canning back to a conversation he had in the early days of See-Saw, before “The King’s Speech,” when he was asked what he would most love to produce. “I said, you know what? I would really love to adapt ‘The Neverending Story,’” he explains. “I was reminded of this recently, so in a way I feel like See-Saw’s 15-year journey in terms of going from book to screen has led us on this journey.”

The next task for the newly formed partnership of See-Saw and Michael Ende Productions will be to find the right creative team to bring the novel to life before packaging the project and seeking distribution partners.

“The journey, in many ways, begins now,” Canning said. “There has been a lot of anticipation from people who love this story about what the next steps would be. “Now we need to talk to writers and directors and hear their passion for the material.”

Many of the details about the production, including the exact number of films that will be made, will depend on the assembled creatives. But Canning said the wildly colorful places Ende described in “The Neverending Story,” including the so-called Ivory Tower, Goab the Colored Desert, the Silver Mountains, the Ghost City, the Silver Lake and the Swamps of Sadness (where Artax, Atréyu’s famous horse, drowns) – lends the filming to being an “international global production”. He added that he would also seek to maintain a connection with the book’s heritage by filming some scenes in Germany (much of the 1984 film was shot at the Bavaria studios in Munich).

While producers may be looking for a modern adaptation of “The Neverending Story,” news of its return to screens comes during something of a revival of ’80s nostalgia, led by shows like “Stranger Things.” It was actually “Stranger Things” that recently brought “The Neverending Story” back to the headlines, with the famous Moroder synth theme from the first film adaptation, a film that Ende rejected for straying too far from his original story, performed in the program. and subsequently go viral online.

In addition to Michael Ende Productions and See-Saw, executive producers on the new films will include former Los Angeles-based Endeavor Content executive Lorenzo De Maio and Ende executor von Gronau, as well as See CEO -Saw, Simon Gillis, and creative director, Helen Gregory. Gillis and De Maio will lead the return of “The Neverending Story” to the market once packaged. The rights deal was negotiated by von Gronau on behalf of Michael Ende Productions and Gillis and attorney Stephen Saltzman of Fieldfisher on behalf of See-Saw.

For Hocke, whose career began with Ende in the early 1980s and who worked closely with him for nearly two decades until his death in 1995, the new adaptation of “The Neverending Story” is not only the perfect opportunity to “make a new monument” for the author, but to celebrate art and the importance of telling stories.

“We need stories like we need air to breathe and water to survive. They give quality to our inner worlds and with this quality we make quality decisions. Stories make the world better,” she said. “And ‘The Neverending Story’ is the story of all stories.”