DODGEBALL Director to Tackle Strategy Board Game Adaptation DUST

Paolo Parente’s steampunk universe headed to the silver screen…

THR has learned that ‘We’re the Millers’ and ‘Dodgeball’ director Rawson Marshall Thurber is to take the helm of a big screen adaptation of strategy board game and graphic novel ‘Dust’ for Lionsgate.

Created by Italian fantasy illustrator Paolo Parente, Dust is set in “an alternate history steampunk-themed version of the 1940s where World War II never ended and the world is divided into three blocs: the Allies, comprised of the US, the Commonwealth, and the French colonies; the Axis, not led by Hitler, who was successfully assassinated in Operation Valkerie; and the SSU, a union of the USSR and China. In this landscape the discovery of new ore leads to the creation of combat robots.” “It’s a cool spin on a genre that I’ve loved for a long time and it opens up narrative avenues that are just thrilling,”

Thurber told THR. “It’s all my nine year-old fantasies wrapped in one thing, a World War Two mash-up.”

Dan Lin (‘The LEGO Movie,’ ‘Sherlock Holmes,’ ‘Gangster Squad’) is attached to produce, with Erik Feig, Jim Miller and James Myers overseeing development for Lionsgate.