Neil Gaiman to adapt Chinese Novel “Journey To The West” to the big screen

BEIJING – Neil Gaiman, the award-winning writer of The Sandman comics and the novella Coraline, has signed on to pen English scripts for a big-budget series of 3D feature films based on Journey to the West, China’s classic novel about the adventures of the Monkey King.

More at the Hollywood Reporter.  Found via The Huffington Post, who were kind enough to link to us.

I’m not familiar with Journey to the West so I checked it out on Wikipedia:

Journey to the West (simplified Chinese: 西游记; traditional Chinese: 西遊記; pinyin: Xī Yóu Jì; Wade–Giles: Hsi-yu chi) is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. Originally published anonymously in the 1590s during the Ming Dynasty, its authorship has been ascribed to the scholar Wu Cheng’en since the 20th century. In English-speaking countries, the tale is also often known simply as Monkey. This was one title used for a popular, abridged translation by Arthur Waley. The Waley translation has also been published as Adventures of the Monkey God, Monkey: [A] Folk Novel of China, and The Adventures of Monkey, and in a further abridged version for children, Dear Monkey.

Oh that story!  Now I’m even more excited!

If this is successful it might encourage a studio to adapt Bridge of Birds.  It’s not technically Chinese literature but it’s set in “An Ancient China That Never Was” is wonderful and funny amazing and why haven’t you read it yet?