Helena Bonham Carter & Kathy Bates Set For Jeunet’s Spivet

For a little over a year, Jean Pierre Jeunet has been working on his first English-language film since the rather disastrous Alien Resurrection. Now he’s busy putting the cast together, with Variety reporting that Helena Bonham Carter and Kathy Bates are on for the film, The Young And Prodigious Spivet.

Jeunet co-wrote the script regular collaborator Guillaume Laurent, adapting Rief Larson’s novel, The Selected Works Of TS Spivet. The tale is about youngster Spivet (Kyle Catlett), a boy who has extraordinary navigation and other skills, who decides to leave his father (Callum Keith Rennie) and the rest of his family behind in Montana to head out on a cross-country quest to the Smithsonian in Washington to receive a prize. There’s no news on exactly who Bonham Carter and Bates will play, but Variety suggests they’ll have significant roles.

The movie will be shot in 3D, even if it doesn’t sound like the sort of movie that would need an extra dimension. However it sounds like Jeunet is hoping to bring some Amelie style magic and plenty of visual effects to the film, so perhaps 3D will add something. Shooting starts June 30th, with the movie planned for release late in 2013.