Nickelodeon Movies Has Picked Its Own Bone

Posted on August 20, 1998

In a move to further bolster its growing slate of animated features, Nickelodeon Movies has acquired the feature film rights to Bone, a successful comic book based on the property by multi-talented cartoonist Jeff Smith, it was announced by Albie Hecht, President of Film and Television Entertainment at Nickelodeon. Bone is being developed as an animated feature film to be directed by Smith. The rights to Bone were acquired for a high six figure amount.

Bone is a comic, fantasy adventure about three lost cousins from fictional Boneville who become stranded in an uncharted land filled with rat creatures and beatle-like dragons. This widely appealing and entertaining comic book has risen to the #1 spot for comic book Humor, and is serialized monthly in Disney Adventures reaching an estimated six million readers. Smith's work is currently published in 13 languages, and has been awarded the highest honors an American can garner in Germany, France and Italy. In 1996, Bone was honored with the National Cartoonists Society Award for Best Comic, as well as France's Angouleme Alph-Art Award for Best Foreign Book, Sweden's Adamson Award and the comic book industry's own Harvey Award for best cartoonist.

"Bone is a comic fantasy adventure in the tradition of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, which will have a tremendous amount of appeal as a feature film to a wide audience," said Hecht. "We will strive to produce a film that has a contemporary sense of humor and characters that the audience can relate to and understand."