Chris Wedge is one of the outstanding animation directors of his generation. The founder of Blue Sky Studios and director of both Robots and Ice Age, he is both often celebrated and emulated with, frankly, very little success. He also, somewhat less famously, voiced the loveable acorn obsessed squirrel Scrat in Ice Age. But it seems Wedge is keen not to stand still and is intent upon testing his directorial skills in the live-action arena. And, rather than tackling a remake or 3D comic-book adaptation, as is almost compulsory in Hollywood at the moment, he has optioned an account of the first observed aeroplane flight of one
Alberto Santos-Dumant. Santos-Dumant was a Brazilian living in Paris who displayed the very first heavier than air flying machine (the Wright brothers operated marginally earlier, in secret, and using a far more perfunctory craft) to dazzled onlookers, and marked the zenith of an eccentric life of innovation and fascination with flight. Paul Hoffmans book
Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight is regarded as the definitive account of Santos-Dumants all too ignored achievements and provides a detailed and impassioned rendering of the Brazilians journey. No names or studios are attached to Wedges project thus far, although the man himself is currently busy helping producing for Fox Animation on Leafmen through his Blue Sky company. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSF-Gs_w0eQ