MGM to Adapt Ray Bradbury’s FROM THE DUST RETURNED


Now this is an unnatural family situation – a grandmother who is mummified, parents that are “loving vampires,” an immobile teen sister who possess the ambulatory, and an uncle that is a winged vampire and a “human kite.” This is the supernatural family of a young adopted boy named Timothy in Ray Bradbury’s 2002 short story collection, From the Dust Returned.

Deadline reports that MGM Studios has obtained the screen rights to this collection of Bradbury stories under the team of Denise Di Novi and Alison Greenspan, the duo behind developing another one of Bradbury’s short story collections, The Illustrated Man, with Warner Bros. Pictures. The Illustrated Man had Zack Snyder (Suckerpunch, 300) attached to direct at one point with a script written by Alex Tse, but due to scheduling issues, Snyder had to withdraw from the project.

Book Synopsis:

Ray Bradbury, America’s most beloved storyteller, has spent a lifetime carrying readers to exhilarating and dangerous places, from dark street comers in unfamiliar cities and towns to the edge of the universe. Now, in an extraordinary flight of the imagination a half-century in the making, he takes us to a most wondrous destination: into the heart of an Eternal Family.

They have lived for centuries in a house of legend and mystery in upper Illinois — and they are not like other midwesterners. Rarely encountered in daylight hours, their children are curious and wild; their old ones have survived since before the Sphinx first sank its paws deep in Egyptian sands. And some sleep in beds with lids.

Now the house is being readied in anticipation of the gala homecoming that will gather together the farflung branches of this odd and remarkable family. In the past-midnight stillness can be detected the soft fluttering of Uncle Einars wings. From her realm of sleep, Cecy, the fairest and most special daughter, can feel the approach of many a welcome being — shapeshifter, telepath, somnambulist, vampire — as she flies high in the consciousness of bird and bat.

But in the midst of eager anticipation, a sense of doom pervades. For the world is changing. And death, no stranger, will always shadow this most singular family: Father, arisen from the Earth; Mother, who never sleeps but dreams; A Thousand Times Great GrandmÉre; Grandfather, who keeps the wildness of youth between his ears.

And the boy who, more than anyone, carries the burden of time on his shoulders: Timothy, the sad and different foundling son who must share it all, remember, and tell…and who, alone out of all of them, must one day age and wither and die.

By turns lyrical, wistful, poignant, and chilling, From the Dust Returned is the long-awaited new novel by the peerless Ray Bradbury — a book that will surely be numbered among his most enduring masterworks.

 

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Lillian 'zenbitch' Standefer
Written by Lillian 'zenbitch' Standefer

is Senior Managing Editor for SciFi Mafia.com, skips along between the lines of sci-fi, fantasy, and reality, and is living proof that geek girls really DO exist!