Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine Film in the Works

Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine
Ray Bradbury's 'Dandelion Wine'
Ray Bradbury’s classic novel Dandelion Wine will make its way to the big screen with Phoenix Pictures’ Mike Medavoy and Doug McKay producing. Rodion Nahapetov will adapt Bradbury’s story and produce the film as well.
 
The story: “Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole wide world that lies beyond the city limits. It is a pair of brand-new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for Grandfather’s renowned intoxicant, the distant clang of the trolley’s bell on a hazy afternoon. It is yesteryear and tomorrow blended into an unforgettable always. But as young Douglas is about to discover, summer can be more than the repetition of established rituals whose mystical power holds time at bay. It can be a best friend moving away, a human time machine who can transport you back to the Civil War, or a sideshow automaton able to glimpse the bittersweet future.”
 
“This is the best birthday gift I could ask for,” stated Bradbury who turns 91 on August 22nd. “Today, I have been reborn! Dandelion Wine is my most deeply personal work and brings back memories of sheer joy as well as terror. This is the story of me as a young boy and the magic of an unforgettable summer which still holds a mystical power over me.”
 
Nahapetov stated, “I was deeply honored when Ray Bradbury chose me to write the screenplay adaptation for his novel Dandelion Wine. When I began my studies at the Cinema Institute in Moscow, many foreign books were banned in Soviet Russia. Still, I decided to make my short film based upon Dandelion Wine because this novel represented to me the childhood I never had. My childhood had been stolen by the ravages and destruction of post World War II Russia and Dandelion Wine restored it back for me.”
 
Source: Phoenix Pictures – August 20, 2011