Thea Sharrock, director of the tearjerker "Me Before You", is in early talks to direct "The One and Only Ivan", Disney's adaptation of the Newbery Medal-winning book written by Katherine Applegate and illustrated by Patricia Castelao.
Allison Shearmur, who was one of the producers on Disney's live-action take on "Cinderella" as well as "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story", is on board to produce the adaptation, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Published by HarperCollins in 2011, the book centers on a silverback gorilla named Ivan who lives in a cage in a shopping mall along with an elephant named Stella and a stray dog called Bob.
Ivan does not remember life before the mall, but when a baby elephant enters and Ivan finds himself taking care of her, he begins to rediscover his previous life and concocts a plan to take the baby elephant away from their abusive owner.
Applegate, who also created the late 1990s book series Animorphs with her husband, Michael Grant, based the story on a real-life gorilla named Ivan who spent 27 years in a Washington mall before being transferred to the Atlanta Zoo.
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