At a certain point I came to terms with the notion that any book I've ever loved will inevitably be turned into the movie, whether its the perpetually in-development adaptation of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay or Sony's big-budget version of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. But for some reason I never imagined that one of the weirdest and most delightful staples of my elementary school library days would be given the movie treatment.
Mr. Popper's Penguins, the 1938 classic about an everyday man who winds up with a house full of Arctic sea birds, will be adapted by 20th Century Fox, according to Variety. Making the whole thing even weirder, the screenplay will be written by Sean Anders and John Morris, the duo behind last fall's surprisingly good sex comedy Sex Drive. I like these guys and what they did with the earlier film, but are they really qualified to be taking over my beloved penguins?
Compared to some other children's stories that have been turned into movie, Mr. Popper has a lot of plot, which makes it well-suited for a movie. I don't think anything will ever replace my memories of the wrinkled copy I checked out of the Mead Hall library, but this whole adaptation sounds intriguing enough that I'll be onboard for now.
