Brad Bird in Talks for HERE THERE BE MONSTERS

After his immense success in reinventing the Mission: Impossible franchise with Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Brad Bird is quickly becoming one of Hollywood's most sought-after directors. While he has said repeatedly in interviews that he would prefer to have the earthquake disaster flick 1906 as his next project, Bird has begun taking meetings and checking out other projects. One of these projects is the naval adventure film Here There Be Monsters, a film that was previously offered to Robert Zemeckis, who declined the project to work on his first live-action feature film in a decade, Flight.  

The plot of the film is similar to those of Seth Grahame-Smith's works (taking something literary or factual and blending it with something unreal or fantastical):

British naval officer John Paul Jones is wrongly stripped of his commission and hired by a rich shipping magnate to investigate the disappearance of his merchant ships in the North Atlantic. Jones and his shipmates slowly realize that it’s the work of a sea serpent, and they use unconventional yet visionary naval strategies to battle the creature and stay alive.

While I think this story skews a little too close to Pirates of the Caribbean territory, it needs a talented director to take control of it and bring it to life. This is certainly a quality of Bird, who has proven himself to be a filmmaking force to be reckoned with. Can Bird bring this cinematic ship to port or will this Incredibles director jump overboard?