Kong: King of Skull Island News

Not real news, just a hint. The long-anticipated live action film of Joe DeVito and Brad Strickland’s illustrated novel, Kong: King of Skull Island appears to be still in play, with Andy Briggs writing the script. A report on a seminar on writing for Hollywood at this year's London Book Fair (in April) confirms that Briggs was working on the King Kong "prequel" at that time (Source).

Briggs, who commented that even European companies without Hollywood-level budgets were looking for "high-concept" projects,  defined the term as "whorishly commercial". Briggs pointed out that screenwriters are converting unsold screenplays such as 30 Days of Night into graphic novels. "You must do anything you can to help executives see the finished movie," he stressed. Hence the appeal of a Kong prequel, one can assume, the great monster ape being one of the World's most iconic figures -- and let's face it -- the graphic novel already exists and has a strong fanbase.

Elsewhere, the completion date for Kong: King of Skull Island has been given as both 2011 (IMDb) and 2012 (interview with Harry Marcos). I guess we wait and see.

Briggs has written several genre films, including the in-production Jericho (2010; dir. James Isaac), but we'll mention the TV movie Rise of the Gargoyles (2009) in particular, as it has monsters in it and gives us an excuse to include the following posters:

 

Research: Avery Guerra. Writing: Robert Hood