Parmount Animation & Maximum Effort Adapting ‘I Eat Poop’ for the Big Screen With Josh Cooley Directing

Paramount Animation will be dropping a load of entomological fun into theaters, announcing it is developing a feature film project based on award-winning author/illustrator Mark Pett’s children’s book I Eat Poop: A Dung Beetle Story (published by Macmillan’s Roaring Brook Press imprint).

The studio is working on the adaptation with Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort, under their first-look deal, and by EGOT-winning songwriters Benj Pasek & Justin Paul (Lyle Lyle Crocodile, Spirited, La La Land) through their prodco, Ampersand.

Oscar- and Annie Award-winning director/writer Josh Cooley (Transformers One, Toy Story 4, Inside Out) is reportedly in talks to direct the film. Brad Butler is overseeing the project for Paramount Animation.

Per Macmillan:

In the vein of Please Don’t Eat Me and We Don’t Eat Our Classmates, I Eat Poop by Mark Pett is a heartwarming and hilarious picture book about friendship, fitting in and accepting each other’s differences.

Dougie has a secret: he’s not a ground beetle. He’s a dung beetle, and he loves eating poop.

Dougie knows he should be proud. Dung beetles help process waste and do other extraordinary things! But Dougie also knows that if anyone at school saw his lunch, he’d be an outcast.

One day, the lunchroom bugs out over a classmate eating poop, and Dougie must make a choice. Can he stand up for his friend — and for his true self?

Pett’s work also includes I’m Not Millie!, This Is My Book, Lizard From the Park, The Boy and the Airplane, The Girl and the Bicycle and The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes. His books have sold over a half a million copies and have been translated into 10 languages.

Cooley is represented by CAA, Jeff Silver at Untitled and Peter Sample and Ryan Levine at Jackoway.

Pasek & Paul are represented by CAA, Kraft-Engel Management, and Schreck, Rose, Dapello, Adams and Berlin & Dunham.

[Source: Deadline]