WETA bringing back The Wind In The Willows

'The Wind in the Willows' is set to make a return to the big screen with WETA Ray Griggs and at the helm.

Kenneth Grahame's 1908 children's classic has been filmed before, not least as a 1949 Disney cartoon; a beautiful stop-motion animated TV series by Cosgrove-Hall in the 1980s; and a live-action version directed by Terry Jones in 1996, starring Steve Coogan, Eric Idle, and Jones himself. The plan this time is a mixture of live-action and puppetry. The dialogue will be recorded first, and WETA (Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings FX company) will then provide the actors with "animal costumes with state-of-the-art animatronics for the facial expressions." The project will film in WETA's home of Wellington, New Zealand.

Also adding to the project's strangeness is its screenwriter Bill Marsilil, who wrote Deja Vu for Tony Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer, and just sold "Speed Racer in space" Lightspeed to Bruckheimer for $3.5m. Do either of these guys have an affinity for oddly proportioned animals in Edwardian England?

In the Marsilii script, the animals join forces to save their land from a sinister plot that threatens to destroy the uneasy truce between the peaceful animals of the Willows and what remains of Mankind. Story begins when Mole ventures out of his lonely home for the first time and finds a world of new friendships, wonders and adventure waiting for him in the land of the Willows.