According to The Hollywood Reporter Gil Kenan, the director of the Academy Award-nominated animated feature Monster House, will helm a motion-capture animated adaptation of Airman, a YA adventure saga written by Artemis Fowl creator Eoin Coffer.  Robert Zemekis, who produced Monster House and who has considerable expertise in this form of animation (Beowulf, The Polar Express), will function once again as a producer on Airman through his ImageMovers company.  Kenan is widely recognized in Hollywood as one of the most talented young directors working in animation.

Coffer, who recently signed on to write a new Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy novel (see “New Hitchhiker’s Guide Book”), is a prolific and hugely talented author who is equally adept at creating a franchise (the Artemis Fowl series) or writing a powerful stand alone saga (Airman).  As The Reporter notes, Airman, which was published in January, is a swashbuckling retro adventure about a young man who is born into a family of aviators that receives help from the kindly royal family of a mythical island kingdom west of Ireland.  But then the king is killed and the boy is wrongly imprisoned.  When he escapes he has to decide which side to take in the ongoing power struggle for control of the kingdom in this taut, rollicking adventure, which has drawn comparisons to The Count of Monte Cristo and The Man in the Iron Mask.