9 Aug – Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and Harvey Weinstein have announced that they will co-produce a film adaptation of Irish author Eoin Colfer's best-selling series "Artemis Fowl". "If you would have told me five years ago I would be producing a project with Disney I would have thought you were crazy," commented Weinstein, who fell out with the US firm in 2004 over the studio's refusal to distribute the Michael Moore documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11", which was funded by Weinstein's studio Miramax. The first film will be based on the first and second book in the series, which are "Artemis Fowl" and "Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident". The series has eight books in total and has sold more than 21 million copies worldwide. The series revolves around the adventures of a teenage criminal mastermind named Artemis Fowl, whose Father was missing and mother is in a nervous breakdown. As a result, Artemis has dedicated his genius towards preserving the family fortune and finding his father. In the first book, the child prodigy and his bodyguard Butler kidnap Lower Elements Police Captain Holly Short, a fairy elf, and demand a ransom from the People - the various fairies who have moved their entire civilization underground to hide from humans - for one ton of twenty-four carat gold. Colfe has stated that he would like to see his home country featured in the film with Oscar-nominated Irish actress Saoirse Ronan cast as Holly Short.
Robert De Niro will executive produce the film while Michael Goldenberg who wrote the screenplay for "Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix", will write the screenplay for the "Artemis Fowl" film.