The Neverending Story is living up to its name. As first reported by Variety, late German author Michael Ende’s fantasy novel is once again being adapted for a new live-action film series.
The movies will be a joint effort from Michael Ende Productions (overseen by his estate) and See-Saw Films, with Iain Canning and Emile Sherman producing for See-Saw and Roman Hocke and Ralph Gassmann for Michael Ende Productions.
Published in 1979, The Neverending Story was a bestseller in Germany and became a global success after being translated into 45 languages. The novel revolves around a lonely boy named Bastian Balthazar Bux who discovers the titular book at an antique bookstore. As he begins reading about a young warrior named Atreyu tasked with saving the Empress of Fantastica, Bastian eventually finds himself as a character in the story.
There isn’t a creative team attached to the project as of yet, but See-Saw has experience with book adaptations like The Power of the Dog and Slow Horses. The production company became famous for its 2011 Oscar-winning film, The King’s Speech.
In an interview with Variety, Canning said he envisioned the new films as an “international global production,” pointing to settings in The Neverending Story like Ivory Tower, Goab the Desert of Colors, Silver Mountains, Spook City, Silver Lake, and the Swamps of Sadness. He also shared plans to film in Germany, where much of the 1984 film was shot.
The first Neverending Story movie was directed by Wolfgang Petersen and starred Barret Oliver as Bastian Balthazar Bux, Noah Hathaway as Atreyu, and Tami Stronach as The Childlike Empress. Based on the first half of the original novel, it was followed by a 1990 sequel, The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter, featuring almost an entirely new cast.
The Next Chapter used the second half of the book as rough source material while introducing a new storyline and was followed by a third movie in 1994 that was based on an entirely original plot.