Joe Wright to Adapt Neil Gaiman's 'The Ocean At the End of the Lane'

"Anna Karenina" helmer Joe Wright will direct a new adaptation of Neil Gaiman's upcoming novel "The Ocean At the End of the Lane."

Deadline reported that Focus Features and Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman's production company Playtone acquired the rights for the Gaiman book. Wright's production company Shoebox films is also coming on board with Wright's producing partner Paul Webster (Anna Karenina).

According to the book's jacket it's about memory and magic and survival, about the power of stories and the darkness inside. 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. The novel will be published in June by William Morrow.

Gaiman's recent novels "Stardust" and "Coraline" have been adapted for the big screen. He also wrote the script to Robert Zemeckis' "Beowulf." His latest novels include "American Gods and "The Graveyard Book."  

Wright last directed "Anna Karenina" with Keira Knightley and Jude Law. The film received 4 Academy Award nominations and won for Best Costume Design. He has also directed the Best Picture nominee "Atonement" and "Pride and Prejudice" with Knightley.

Playtone productions recently won 5 Emmy's for the Sarah Palin inspired film "Game Change." They will next be adapting Gaiman's "American Gods."

No word yet on who will be adapting the novel and on when production will begin.