Neil Jordan Adapting 'Skippy Dies', Irish Shoot Planned | The Irish Film & Television Network

Neil Jordan (Ondine, Breakfast on Pluto) has commenced adapting Paul Murray’s novel, ‘Skippy Dies’ for a feature film he will direct that will shoot in Ireland. The Dublin-based caper, recently featured as one of 13 books on the longlist for the Man Booker Prize, centres around the life of Daniel ‘Skippy’ Juster and his room-mate Ruprecht Van Doren, and their life in a Catholic boarding school.

The project comes from Number 9 Films and is to be produced by James Flynn (Ondine), Elizabeth Karlsen (How to Lose Friends & Alienate People) and Stephen Woolley (Made in Dagenham).

The novel’s story, as mentioned, features Ruprecht Van Doren, an overweight genius whose hobbies include very difficult maths and the search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence and his roommate Daniel ‘Skippy’ Juster. In their school, Seabrook College for Boys, nobody pays either of them much attention. But when Skippy falls for Frisbee-player Lori, the from the girls’ school next door, suddenly all kinds of people take an interest – including Carl, part-time drug-dealer and official school psychopath. While his teachers battle over modernisation, and Ruprecht attempts to open a portal into a parallel universe, Skippy, in the name of love, heads for a showdown – in the form of a fatal doughnut-eating race that only one person will survive.

A spokesperson for Number 9 Films tells IFTN that the shooting schedule for the film has not yet been finalised but that the film will shoot in Ireland.

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