Chris Wedge tackling Leaf Men

Ice Age/Robots helmer adapting another William Joyce book

Sep 24th 2009 By James White

Chris Wedge, the man who made the original Ice Age and Robots, is getting set to direct Leaf Men.

It'll be adapted from William Joyce's illustrated kids' book The Leaf Men And The Brave Good Bugs, which is not a shock considering how closely Joyce worked on developing Robots with Wedge.

What is surprising is that it's being produced by Fox, after Wedge was given permission to take development of the film elsewhere.

Where did he take it? To Pixar, since he's been wanting to branch out in his directing career and was offered a healthy deal by old Disney colleague and new Disney/Pixar head John Lasseter.

But despite the Mouse House starting to seal a deal, it suddenly discovered that Fox didn't want to give the title up and was wooing the director back to the fold and back to Blue Sky Studios.

So now he'll stay there to develop and direct the film, co-written with Jim Hart, that finds a group of heroic insects battling a spider queen.

They end up turning to the titular, mythical leaf men to help out in their struggle. Yes, insects are hot animation properties again. It's like 1998 all over again…

[Source: Variety]