News from the European Film market in Berlin reveals that The Jim Henson Company is adapting Tom Holt’s comedic fantasy The Portable Door. It’s the first installment in Tom Holt’s J.W. Wells & Co fantasy adventure book series, based on the magic firm from the two-act comic opera The Sorcerer by Gilbert & Sullivan. Now, The Hollywood Reporter reports that Christoph Waltz and Guy Pearce have joined the cast of the upcoming adaptation.
Waltz is going to portray Humphrey Wells, who is the CEO of J.W. Wells & Co. According to the description, the charismatic villain Wells is “disrupting the world of magic by bringing modern corporate strategy to ancient magical practices.” As for Pearce, he will play Dennis Tanner, a “shape-shifting goblin trapped in the organization’s middle management.”
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The synopsis for The Portable Door book reads as follows:
“Starting a new job is always stressful, but when Paul Carpenter arrives at the office of H.W. Wells he has no idea what trouble lies in store. Because he is about to discover that the apparently respectable establishment now paying his salary is in fact a front for a deeply sinister organization that has a mighty peculiar agenda. It seems that half the time his bosses are away with the fairies. But they’re not, of course. They’re away with the goblins.”
The Portable Door film will be directed by Jeffrey Walker from a screenplay written by Leon Ford. It is a co-production between The Jim Henson Company, Story Bridge Films and ArcLight Films with Jim Henson’s Lisa Henson and Blanca Lista and Story Bridge’s Todd Fellman set as producers.
How do you think Christoph Waltz and Guy Pearce will fare as Humphrey Wells and Dennis Tanner? Let us know in the comments section below.
