Stardust in your eyes...

I'd actually first heard about this last month on the G4 network (cable teevee) but it hadn't sunk in that the film really IS in production as of now, and has been slated for release in 2007. I can't believe it's TRUE!! It's TRUE!!! They're making my favourite Neil Gaiman novel into a film!

O Sweet-Faerie-flutter-heart-pitter-pixie-dust-flutter-flutter!!

originally announced October 26, 2005

Variety has revealed that Layer Cake director, Matthew Vaughn, is in final negotiations to direct and produce a live-action adaptation of Neil Gaiman's adult-orientated fairy tale Stardust.

Gaiman's first novel, the wonderfully titled "Stardust: Being a Romance Within the Realms of Faerie," was released in 1997 to critical and commercial acclaim, scooping the 1999 Mythopoeic Award for best adult novel. The story tells the tale of a young man in a small village in deep in the English countryside where both magic and normality meet. The man, attempting to win the love of his sweetheart, promised to bring her back a fallen star from the dangerous magical realm where he must face all manner of witches, goblins, gnomes, trolls and every other fantasy cliche you care to imagine.

Vaughn wrote the screenplay for the film with his writing partnet Jane Goldman and the studio is hoping the film will combine elements of the stupidly lucrative Harry Potter franchise with elements from past classics such as The Princess Bride and The NeverEnding Story. It's an interesting project for Vaughn to helm after succesfully breaking himself in with Layer Cake and almost directing X-Men 3 for Fox (Brett Ratner later replaced him after he left the project) and his highly-stylised visuals could certainly bring a much-needed real-world quality to an otherwise fantastical and implausible world.