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It was revealed earlier this year that Walt Disney Pictures has secured the rights to Katherine Applegate's children's book The One and Only Ivan. Today, Variety reports that School of Rock and Nacho Libre scribe Mike White is in negotiations to direct the big screen adaptation.

Illustrated by Patricia Castelao, the Newberry Medal winning book was published in 2011 and is officially described as follows:

Ivan is an easygoing gorilla. Living at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade, he has grown accustomed to humans watching him through the glass walls of his domain. He rarely misses his life in the jungle. In fact, he hardly ever thinks about it at all.

Mike Newell, the director behind Four Weddings and Funeral and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, has signed on to direct Disney’s adaptation of The One and Only Ivan, the Newbery Medal-winning book written by Katherine Applegate.

Allison Shearmur, who produced the live-action hit Cinderella for the studio and is a producer on Star Wars: Rogue One, is producing the project, which has a script by Mike White (School of Rock).

Disney is in talks with Thea Sharrock, director of “Me Before You,” to helm its movie version of the gorilla story “The One and Only Ivan.”

British director Mike Newell had been attached last year for the project, but is no longer involved. Variety first reported in 2014 that Mike White had come on board to script the adaptation of Katherine Applegate’s children’s story.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Angelina Jolie will produce and lend her voice to Walt Disney Pictures‘ live-action/animated hybrid The One and Only Ivan, based on the 2011 Newbery Medal-winning book written by Katherine Applegate and illustrated by Patricia Castelao. She will voice the role of a baby elephant named Stella.

Rockwell will voice the title character of Ivan the gorilla.

Q: What's up with Disney's The One and Only Ivan?

Skyler Shuler: Hearing it may go to Disney+ for the launch.