Ben Kingsley to lead film adaptation of graphic novel 'Violent Cases'

Veteran actor Ben Kingsley is set to star in the screen adaptation of Violent Cases, the first graphic novel by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film is led by the creative team behind the BAFTA-nominated movie The Girl With All the Gifts, including writer Mike Carey, director Colm McCarthy and producer Camille Gatin.

The graphic novel's original publisher Mike Lake had reached out to Gaiman about turning it into a feature film. Lake suggested writer Carey, who had previously written Lucifer and many other books in Gaiman's Sandman universe. The novel was published in 1987 by Escape Books.

Violent Cases is a journey into the mind of Gaiman, as a famous author who recounts fragmented childhood memories and visits an osteopath who once worked for the notorious gangster Al Capone, weaving a dark and twisting tale about stories, our memory, and violence.

Kingsley, known for Gandhi, Schindler's List and Hugo, said he is looking forward to starting work on the film.

"I'm delighted to be working with this fantastic team on Violent Cases, which for me is about the power and importance of storytelling, about how we negotiate the shadows cast by the father figures in our lives and above all about the right of our inner child to be heard," he said.

"Violent Cases is a wild, hallucinatory, yet thought-provoking and emotional comic. It's so exciting to build a film from this incredible, genre-defining work," added McCarthy.

As an aspiring writer back in the late 1980s, Carey said reading Violent Cases was a revelation and a joy for him.

"Its darkness and playfulness defined a new approach to storytelling. Thirty-five years on, it's still unique, and bringing it across into a new medium feels like discovering it again for the first time.

"Neil Gaiman redefined serialised comics with The Sandman, but Violent Cases was his and Dave McKean's early masterpiece. It's thrilling to be introducing it to a new audience, and taking its visual lyricism into a new medium," he said.

The film will be produced by Lakesville Productions' Edmund Kingsley, Scary Monster's Gatin and McCarthy and Foton.Pictures' Carlos Enrique Cusco and Ari Taboada.