Jun 12, 2015

"Feast" Director Patrick Osborne directs the sci-fi/fantasy "Nimona"

Director Patrick Osborne. (Photo:Ricky Middlesworth/©2014 Disney)

Armed with an Oscar for best animated short, Patrick Osborne will bring Noelle Stevenson's Eisner- and Harvey-award nominated comic to the screen for Fox Animation. The news was first reported by the Hollywood Reporter.

Nimona's sci-fi/fantasy mashup will mark the Feast director's feature film debut. Stevenson's tale of a female shapeshifter battling a mad scientist and a corrupt regime of hoverboarding knights is a refreshing and unconventional choice for a mainstream Hollywood animation production, and with Osborne attached, it's definitely one to keep an eye on. Fox's last non-Blue Sky animated feature was Reel FX's The Book of Life, released last fall.

As reported previously, Osborne, no longer with Disney, is also creating the short film Pearl for Google. Like his Paperman colleague John Kahrs, Osborne is parlaying short-film plaudits into a feature career outside of the Disney umbrella.

Former DreamWorks executive Marc Haimes, who wrote Laika's next release Kubo and the Two Strings, is attached as screenwriter of the Vertigo Entertainment production. Vertigo is also co-producing the The Lego Movie Sequel and The Lego Batman Movie, and involved in the development of feature film adaptations of Adventure Time and the popular horror anime Death Note.

Nimona began life as Stevenson's webcomic thesis while a student at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her other Eisner-nominated comic, Lumberjanes, created with Shannon Watters and Brooke A. Allen, is also in development for Fox.

Watch Cartoon Brew's interview with Patrick Osborne: