Ben Kingsley to lead screen adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Violent Cases

The first graphic novel by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, Violent Cases, will be adapted for the big screen with seasoned actor Ben Kingsley in the lead role. The creative team behind the BAFTA-nominated picture The Girl With All the Gifts, which includes writer Mike Carey, director Colm McCarthy, and producer Camille Gatin, is in charge of this one, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Mike Lake, the publisher of the graphic novel's first edition, had contacted Neil Gaiman about adapting it into a movie.

The author Carey, who had previously authored Lucifer and numerous other books set in Neil Gaiman's Sandman universe, was recommended by Lake.

Escape Books published the book in 1987.

A look into Neil Gaiman's mind, Violent Cases is a dark and twisty story about storytelling, memory, and violence. Gaiman recalls fragmented childhood memories and meets an osteopath who formerly served legendary criminal Al Capone.

Kingsley said he is looking forward to starting work on the film.

“I'm delighted to be working with this fantastic team on Violent Cases, which for me is about the power and importance of storytelling, about how we negotiate the shadows cast by the father figures in our lives and above all about the right of our inner child to be heard,” he said.

“Violent Cases is a wild, hallucinatory, yet thought-provoking and emotional comic. It’s so exciting to build a film from this incredible, genre-defining work,” added McCarthy.

As an aspiring writer back in the late 1980s, Carey said reading Violent Cases was a revelation and a joy for him.

“The darkness and playfulness defined a new approach to storytelling. Thirty-five years on, it’s still unique, and bringing it across into a new medium feels like discovering it again for the first time.”

Violent Cases will be bankrolled by Lakesville Productions' Edmund Kingsley, Scary Monster's Gatin and McCarthy and Foton Pictures' Carlos Enrique Cusco and Ari Taboada.

“Neil Gaiman redefined serialised comics with The Sandman, but Violent Cases was his and Dave McKean's early masterpiece. It's thrilling to be introducing it to a new audience, and taking its visual lyricism into a new medium,” McCarthy said.