io9 has a few tidbits from screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours) regarding his in-the-works film adaptation of Sharp Teeth. As reported in February, Beaufoy is preparing a screenplay version of Toby Barlow’s novel-length poem for his perennial collaborator, director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Sunshine, Slumd– oh here).
From the interview:
io9: Are you able to enjoy a book, when you’re reading a book? Or do you see a screenplay straightaway?
Simon Beaufoy: It’s quite difficult to read a book now, I took to reading poetry (because I thought that will be alright. And it’s not. I just started adapting an epic poem. So that didn’t work, called Sharp Teeth it’s a really fantastic novel length poem. It’s gangland LA. Except the gangs happen to also shapeshift into dogs. It’s all about the pack dynamics — it’s very mad, but really fabulous. So poetry wasn’t even safe from the adaptation process.
Will it be animated?
Yeah probably not, that would be too easy. We have to make life much more difficult for ourselves and use real dogs. That would be the best, because that would be truly terrifying. I think animation would allow too much distance from it.
Beaufoy doesn’t bring up much of anything new, but it’s interesting to know they’re not considering doing something animated. That’s kind of a shame – an R-rated (traditionally!) animated feature would die at the box office, but damn, wouldn’t it look good? Especially if they used the book’s cover art as a design cue!