As a fan of British comedian Ricky Gervais I feel obligated to post about this next bit of news, even though it’s a bit less interesting to me than some of his other upcoming film projects. For the past five years or so he has been doing a series of children’s books called Flanimals. Illustrated by Rob Steen, these books document a number of different species of weird and wacky creatures that co-exist in an imaginary world… things like the Plamgloti, an ape-like Flanimal that swallows its hands to walk, or the Offledermis, a Flanimal that is born inside-out to avoid its own smell. Basically they are his own version of Pokemon, if you will.

If I didn’t know better I’d think the whole thing was a joke by Gervais to illustrate how ridiculous children’s books are, but then the first book actually ended up on the New York Times bestseller list. Go figure. ITV was planning a TV series based on the books, but the project ended up getting scrapped, and now Gervais is developing a feature film instead. Universal-based Illumination Entertainment will be turning it into a 3-D animated movie, with Matt Selman (The Simpsons) writing the script. Gervais had this to say about voicing the lead character, Puddy the Puddloflaj: “It will be great to play a short, fat, sweaty loser for a change… a real stretch.” Has anyone out there read the books? Will this be worth checking out (or at least better than Ghost Town)?

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