After languishing for several years, Dan Simmons‘s Hyperion Cantos looks to be finally moving toward movie production. Peter Graham King, via his GK Films company, will be producing for Warner Bros., with Trevor Sands signed to adapt the first two books (1990 Hugo winner Hyperion and Nebula nominee The Fall of Hyperion) as one feature.
As The Hollywood Reporter explains it, “Hyperion deals with a space war, with most of the action taking place on a planet named Hyperion, known not only for its electricity-spewing trees but also for the Time Tombs, large artifacts that can move through time. The tombs are guarded by a monster called the Shrike, which impales people on metal trees.” King has had the film rights to the series for quite some time, but “its structure, inspired by Boccaccio’s Decameron and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and its multiple timelines made the task of adapting it into a feature unwieldy and challenging.”
Sands plans to take a “selective approach” to the novels’ multiple points of view, in order to tell a coherent story on screen. His previous writing credits include the as-yet-unproduced Six Billion Dollar Man for Dimension and an adaptation of David Brin’s Startide Rising for Paramount.