MGM Making Film Adaptation of Ray Bradbury's FROM THE DUST RETURNED

Movie MGM by Ben Pearson

 

Ray Bradbury is no stranger to having his literary works adapted to the big screen. Films like Something Wicked This Way Comes, It Came From Outer Space, A Sound of Thunder, and Farenheit 451 are all based on his writings, and now MGM has put another of his projects on the fast track toward production. Deadline reports that the studio has acquired screen rights to From The Dust Returned, a series of short stories about a young boy named Timothy who is adopted by a family of ghosts.

Seems like a pretty common sense adaptation in today's marketplace, especially considering all of the similar projects out there from Beetlejuice to the upcoming Hotel Transylvania. Timothy tells the short stories to his grandmother (who happens to be a mummy) at a family reunion that happens every year on Halloween.

Mom and dad are loving vampires; teen sister Cecy is immobilized and bed-ridden, but she can teleport into the bodies of other mortals so that she can experience human emotions, Uncle Einar is a green-winged vampire who serves as a human kite for Timothy.

Sounds a bit like The Addams Family, which makes sense considering Bradbury was close friends with Addams Family creator Charles Addams. Sounds vaguely similar to another excellent Ray Bradbury story I grew up with, The Halloween Tree. Seek out the animated version of that if you can next time Halloween rolls around; it's a children's story, but Leonard Nimoy voices one of the characters, Bradbury himself narrates the film, and it's a great teaching tool about the meaning of Halloween.

From the Dust Returned could very well be another one of those great underrated movies that not many people see, but hopefully it develops cult classic status later on Blu-ray and DVD. Bradbury's work is always solid, so I'm hoping for good things for this project. We'll let you know how casting comes together and whether the filmmakers intend on making this a live action version or an animated adaptation.

Looking forward to seeing another one of Bradbury's stories hit the big screen? What is your favorite film adaptation of his?

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