Wexford author Eoin Colfer will finally see a big screen adaptation of his ‘Artemis Fowl’ novels with Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and Disney collaborating on a film based on the first two books in the series.
‘Artemis Fowl’ - described by Colfer as ‘Die Hard with fairies’ - follows 12 year old criminal mastermind Artemis as he battles Captain Holly Short and the fairies of the LEPrecon Unit.
Screenwriter Michael Goldenberg, who adapted ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’, will write the Artemis Fowl screenplay, with Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal onboard as executive producers.
Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax purchased the rights to ‘Artemis Fowl’ back in 2001 and although the rights fell to Disney when he left the company in 2005, Weinstein retained the right to produce the film.
Eoin Colfer is a former primary school teacher whose first book ‘Benny and Omar’ was published in 1998, before Artemis Fowl was became a literary phenomenon in 2001.
The books have already sold 21 million copies around the world and been translated into 44 languages.
There are now eight books in the ‘Artemis Fowl’ series including The Arctic Incident, The Eternity Code, The Opal Deception, The Lost Colony, The Time Paradox, The Atlantis Complex, and The Last Guardian which was released in July 2012.
