Ahead of Artemis Fowl’s release on the Disney+ streaming service on June 12th 2020, director Kenneth Branagh has explained his approach to adapting the beloved book series by Eoin Colfer.
In an interview with ComicBook.com, Branagh discussed how his adaptation changes the narrative of the books by stitching story threads from multiple instalments to establish the first movie in a potential film saga.
“Well, you know they’re eight books, they get increasingly exotic. Amazing imagination Eoin Colfer has,” Branagh said. “Some of the twist and turns, and incidents are so out there. The first book has a relative simplicity, Eoin calls it “Diehard” with fairies. It’s a siege movie and inside that, what fell to us to be inside all of that action would be the emotional backbone that you could get, would be if we could just take the minimum, just one basic incident from the second book, Artemis Fowl in the Arctic Incident, which is the kidnap of his father, and lace that into the first story, so that the emotional drive was there, that maybe allows our audience to connect to Artemis emotionally.”
“You keep the basic structure of a kid who, by the time he understands that magic is real, has created a siege from another world around Fowl Manor,” he explained. “So those were the two elements we tried to keep as close to the source as possible, of what Eoin had done, once we decided those things.”
Branagh continued to offer his thoughts on the possibility of Artemis Fowl being turned into a series and he believes it is in the hands of the audience to make that happen.
“There is [a possibility], and, well, who knows?” Branagh says. “The audience decides, for sure, and I think there are lots of things that I think have immense potential.”
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Disney’s Artemis Fowl, based on the beloved book by Eoin Colfer, is a fantastical, spellbinding adventure that follows the journey of 12-year-old genius Artemis Fowl, a descendant of a long line of criminal masterminds, as he seeks to find his father who has mysteriously disappeared. With the help of his loyal protector Butler, Artemis sets out to find him, and in doing so uncovers an ancient, underground civilization—the amazingly advanced world of fairies. Deducing that his father’s disappearance is somehow connected to the secretive, reclusive fairy world, cunning Artemis concocts a dangerous plan— so dangerous that he ultimately finds himself in a perilous war of wits with the all-powerful fairies.
Artemis Fowl features a cast that includes Ferdia Shaw, Judi Dench, Josh Gad, Lara McDonell, Tamara Smart, and Nonzo Anozie.
