UPDATED 14/03: Brad Bird's 1906 is a go! Warner Brothers & Disney/Pixar to co-produce.

I got an E-mail from the book's author James Dalessandro who kindly corrects us on a few things...

Thank you for posting the information on 1906, it's actually been going on for a while over there at Pixar, but Warner Brothers is tight lipped about everything they do.. The film is not based on John Logan's original script: Logan was hired to rewrite but left before writing anything because Brad Bird was busy and unavailable on Ratatouille. The original screenplay was written by James Dalessandro, the book's author....

Original article below... Brad Bird, the director with the best track record for great animated films over any other director working today (Ratatotuille, The Incredibles, The Iron Giant) has finally got the go-ahead to work on his next feature, a LIVE-ACTION adaptation of James Dalessandro's 2005 novel 1906. Surprisingly, Warner Bros. have jumped onto the project and it will now be a co-production between them and Disney/Pixar, probably because the latter studio have never dealt into live action movies. This might end up being more of a WB production than Disney/Pixar...

The story centers on a college student who begins to investigate the murder of his father, uncovering a web of deceit that has left the city vulnerable to the sort of fire that breaks out when the Great Earthquake of 1906 hits San Francisco.

Bird is now re-writing the original script from John Logan (Sweeney Todd, The Last Samurai). Though I could honestly watch Brad Bird make timeless animated classics for the rest of his career and still be amazed by the worlds he can create, I'm interested as hell to see what Bird will do with a live-action feature. And real life events worked into fictional tales can often be interesting. Animation has truly lost a master to live-action here (hopefully he will come back soon) but if he can re-create the epic feel of his CGI movies, then we are in for a treat with this. source - the hollywood reporter