‘Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH’ To Be Turned Into Live-Action/CGI Franchise by ‘Ice Age”s Michael Berg

Don Bluth made his feature-length directorial debut in 1982 with The Secret of NIMH, which was based on Robert C. O’Brien’s Newbery Medal-winning children’s novel Mrs. Frisby & The Rats Of NIMH. MGM, the distributor of Bluth’s film, believes it’s time for an update, and has re-acquired the rights to O’Briens books for a live-action/CGI hybrid.

The new film, to be developed by Ice Age franchise writer Michael Berg, will be an origin tale, setting up a potential franchise that will be produced by Daniel Bobker and Ehren Kruger.

According to Deadline, it will focus on “an imperiled mouse protagonist [who] befriends a comical crew of lab rats as they turn hyper-intelligent [and] escape a secret laboratory.” Based on this synopsis, Film School Rejects has suggested that the “imperiled mouse” might be Mrs. Frisby’s husband Jonathan, who was never seen in The Secret of NIMH because he’d been killed prior to its events.