Brad Bird's 1906 Film Project is Still Being Developed

I've been following Brad Bird's live-action 1906 film project since it was first announced, but it seems like one of those films that unfortunately may never going to happen. He's been talking about it for years, but it's never gone beyond anything but talk.  At one point the movie was said to be dead. But, if you recall, Steven Spielberg's Lincoln film project was in the pipeline for several years, and now it's finally actually being made which is great! So there's still hope for 1906.

The film will tell the story about the great earthquake that hit the city of San Francisco in 1906 and absolutely demolished the city beyond all recognition. The film is based on the novel by James Dalessandro. This was supposed to have been his first live-action film, but now that he's directing Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, 1906 could potentially be his second. 

In a recently interview Bird confirmed that his 1906 movie is not dead, and that he's still working on developing it. Of course It doesn't look like it will happen anytime soon. At one point in the interview Bird was asked if 1906 might be his next project, after Ghost Protocol... Here's what he had to say,

I don’t know. It’s all about getting the story to work, and the canvas is so big on it that it’s easy to bust down its movie-sized walls and go rampaging throughout the countryside. The problem has always been scaling it and containing it in a movie-sized length. It’s really a movie that wants to be a miniseries. But if you did it as a miniseries, then you’d have to do it for the small screen, and the story demands to be told on a big screen. So we’re still working on it.

Big screen, small screen, I don't care how the story is told as long as it gets told. This would be such a great movie to watch. Hopefully it happens sooner rather than later. 

Here's the description of the novel that the film would be based on, 

James Dalessandro's "riveting account of corruption, greed, and murder in the City by the Bay" Set during the great San Francisco earthquake and fire, this page-turning historical novel reveals recently uncovered facts that forever change our understanding of what really happened. Narrated by a feisty young reporter, Annalisa Passarelli, the novel paints a vivid picture of the Post-Victorian city, from the mansions of Nob Hill to the underbelly of the Barbary Coast to the arrival of tenor Enrico Caruso and the Metropolitan Opera. Central to the story is the ongoing battle fought even as the city burns that pits incompetent and unscrupulous politicians against a coalition of honest police officers, newspaper editors, citizens, and a lone federal prosecutor. James Dalessandro weaves unforgettable characters and actual events into a compelling epic.