Andy Serkis To Give Rumpelstiltskin Fairy Tale A Makeover With 'Steelskin'

Motion-capture master Andy Serkis has been slated to make his directorial debut with Jungle Book: Origins for a little while now. But back in 2014, the project was pushed back to an October 6th, 2017 release, allowing Disney's The Jungle Book from Jon Favreau to debut in 2016 without any competition. Now Serkis is lining up another project that will get him behind the camera.

The actor who brought characters such as King Kong and Gollum to life will direct, produce and star in Steelskin, an update of the classic fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin that has been set up at 20th Century Fox. Find out more about the project below.

The Tracking Board reports Fox is moving forward with the Rumpelstiltskin movie with a script from Drive writer Hossein Amini that is described as being in the same vein as Snow White and the Huntsman, which Amini helped work on back in 2012. So we're looking at yet another gritty reimagining of a familiar tale.

For those who don't know, the story of Rumpelstiltskin comes from The Grimm Brothers' famous tales, with this one following a woman who has the ability to spin straw into gold, or at least that's what her father tells the king. She ends up getting locked in a tower by the king until she spins some gold for him, and if she doesn't have it by morning, she will have her head cut off.

But out of nowhere, a little imp-like creature appears and uses magic to spin straw into gold in exchange for her necklace. When the king wants more gold, he helps her again in exchange for a ring. But when it happens a third time, with the promise of marriage to the king if she succeeds, she has nothing left to give, prompting the creature to make a deal for the woman's first-born son.

Years later, the imp returns to claim his prize, but the queen begs for an alternative deal. And for some reason, the imp tells the woman that if she can guess his name in three days, then he can keep the boy. She follows him into the woods, hears him singing his own name, and outsmarts him the next day.

I'm not entire sure how that can be turned into a story akin to Snow White and the Huntsman, unless the imp is a more menacing creature and the queen is turned into some kind of hero that has to fight him off for her son. Or maybe her son is more grown up and must fight the creature himself.

There's no indication as to when this project might get off the ground, especially since Jungle Book: Origins is presumably still happening over at Warner Bros. Pictures. We'll have to wait and see what Serkis ends up doing next. In the meantime, we're still waiting to see what he'll look like in Star Wars: The Force Awakens in a few short days.