There’s always a lot of interest in taking Neil Gaiman’s books to the big screen, but only a few, such as Coraline and Stardust, have actually made it into cinemas. However it seems Joe Wright (Atonement, Anna Karenina) wants to have a go adapting the fantasy novelist’s work, as Deadline reports that Focus Features has snapped up the rights to Gaiman’s The Ocean At The End Of The Lane for Wright to direct.

The book doesn’t reach shop shelves until this summer, but ‘it’s about about memory and magic and survival, about the power of stories and the darkness inside each of us. The narrator describes a tale that begins when he was seven and a lodger stole the family’s car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Creatures from beyond the world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and a menace unleashed – within his family, and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it. His only defense is three women, on a ramshackle farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duckpond is an ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang.’

Hopefully it’ll have an easier ride to the screen than the various attempts to make American Gods, Sandman, and The Graveyard Book over the years.

Anna Karenina was a big risk that paid off, which means director Joe Wright can have his pick of follow-up projects. It appears he’s interested in getting into escapology as the LA Times reports that he is in early discussions to direct The Secret Life of Houdini for Summit Entertainment. He’s taking over from Gary Ross who became attached back in May, but has bowed out to make Peter and the Starcatchers.

The project is based on the book written by William Kalush and Larry Sloman, which claims that world-famous magician Harry Houdini also led a double life as a British spy. Summit first acquired the rights to this adaptation back in 2009, when Jeff Nathanson was attached to direct. Noah Oppenheim is writing the screenplay.

It’s not the only Hodini movie in the works, as a more traditional biopic is still in the works at Sony, which Francis Lawrence is directing from a script by Scott Frank. It isn’t known when either movie might go into production.