Actor Elijah Wood is returning to his native New Zealand, but he won’t be making a detour to the Shire this time around. Wood is set to star in Come to Daddy director Ant Timpson’s first foray into the adventure comedy genre, as reported by Variety. Bookworm is a collaboration between Timpson and Wood and the crew behind Come to Daddy. The script for the 1997 action drama The Edge was written by David Mamet, whose name reportedly inspired the title of this family adventure. Both Timpson and Bookworm screenwriter Toby Harvard seemed to draw inspiration from this outdoor adventure picture starring Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins and set against the magnificent New Zealand terrain.
Mildred, a 12-year-old girl, has her world turned upside down after her mother is hospitalised in the script. Mildred’s “American magician father, Strawn Wise (Wood)” is responsible for his bookworm daughter because she has no other family. Strawn prepares a camping excursion into the bush of New Zealand to distract her from her mother’s illness. “The escapist 70s movie we grew up with, non-pandering cinema where adults and kids loved all the onscreen escapades equally,” says Timpson of the project.
The plot takes a whimsical turn when the two set out to find the “mythological beast known as the Canterbury Panther,” despite the fact that Mildred knows nothing about the Southern Alps and Strawn is more at home on the Las Vegas Strip than in the wilderness. The head of the distribution business handling Bookworm, David Garrett, had nothing but high respect for the screenplay and the characters at Harvard, saying: “We think you’ll agree that this script has all the makings of a classic New Zealand film, complete with the country’s trademark blend of dry humour and raw emotional intensity and stunning natural scenery. And the bond between dad and daughter is so entertaining that you can’t help but like them both, flaws and all.”
Most moviegoers recognise Wood from his role as Frodo Baggins in Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy, another epic adventure shot in New Zealand. The young actor also appeared in a few family films including Flipper and The Adventures of Huck Finn as the main character. Timpson, who directed Wood in Bookworm, has remarked that the pair are “always obsessed by fathers…especially the qualities that we’re frightened of having or expressing,” thus in their upcoming 2019 horror comedy Come to Daddy, we’ll get to watch Wood portray the father instead of the starry-eyed youngster.
It appears that Mildred and Strawn will find more than just a mythological beast in their search for the Canterbury Panther; perhaps they will also find a strong and loving father-daughter bond. Pre-production for Bookworm has begun, and shooting is scheduled to begin in New Zealand in March/April 2023.