Fox Animation Unwraps Anubis Tapestry

Daily Variety reports that Fox Animation has optioned Actionopolis’s The Anubis Tapestry: Between Twilights, a young-adult novel about mummies. Author Bruce Zick has himself worked as an artist on on such animated features as Disney/Pixar’s A Bug’s Life and Finding Nemo, and Dreamworks’ The Road to El Dorado. In addition, he has drawn issues of Marvel’s Thor comic-book series and produced comics for Darkhorse.

Should it go into the production pipeline, Anubis Tapestry will reportedly be a loose adaptation of the book about a boy who ventures into the Egyptian Underworld and battles monsters and other supernatural forces as he searches for his father, the victim of a mummy’s curse.

Fox Animation has done well with its blockbuster Ice Age franchise, which gets a third installment, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, in July of 2009. The studio also scored a hit with its recently released animated adaptation of the Dr. Suess book Horton Hears a Who! Anubis Tapestry marks a foray into the family-friendly horror genre, which Sony Pictures Animation tapped into with the Oscar-nominated Monster House, and will revisit with Hotel Transylvania. Monsters are also currently in with DreamWorks Animation, which is preparing Monsters vs. Aliens for release on March 27, 2009.