Ben Stiller will transform into royalty for his upcoming film King Doug. We get word of his ascension thanks to the professionals at Variety:
DreamWorks has snapped up the graphic novel “The Return of King Doug” for Ben Stiller to produce as a potential starring vehicle. Greg Orb and Jason Oremland wrote “King Doug,” which will be published next year by Oni Press. The pair have been tapped to pen the screenplay.
Stiller is producing through his DreamWorks-based Red Hour Films alongside the shingle’s Stuart Cornfeld and Jeremy Kramer. Closed on Mondays’ Eric Gitter is also producing. Joe Nozemack and Peter Schwerin are exec producing.
Ben Stiller always seems to be working, or lining up future employment. I am unsure how much downtime this dude gets; but I am going to guess that it isn’t much. Films based on graphic novels seem to becoming quite popular, and in this case, the film rights have been shored up before the book has launched. I am not sure if they are planning a simultaneous release, or if the studio just wanted to snap up the story before competition started to show up.
The graphic novel is a mystery to us at present, but I am sure news will surface soon enough.