Hugh Jackman boards “The Diary of a Part-Time Indian” YA novel

PanARMENIAN.Net - Fox 2000 is developing a movie based on Sherman Alexie’s YA novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” with Hugh Jackman on board to produce, Variety reports.

The studio has set the project up with Fox-based Temple Hill and The Donners’ Company. The producers are Jackman, Temple Hill’s Wyck Godfrey, and Isaac Klausner, with Lauren Shuler Donner and Jack Leslie. Jackman is not involved in an acting role at this point.

Alexie’s novel, published in 2007, is a first-person narrative by Native American teenager Arnold Spirit, Jr. (aka “Junior”) — a 14-year-old cartoonist living on the Spokane Indian Reservation. He’s always been picked on and is encouraged by a high school teacher to go to an all-white public high school off the reservation.

“Part-Time Indian” centers on Junior’s first year at the new school, where he’s the only Native American. The book features 65 comic illustrations by Ellen Forney.

Alexie grew up on the Spokane reservation. He wrote the short story collection “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,” which he adapted for the screenplay for the 1998 movie “Smoke Signals.”

Elizabeth Gabler and Erin Siminoff are overseeing “Part-Time Indian” at Fox 2000.

Jackman is currently starring in and producing the P.T. Barnum biopic “The Greatest Showman” for Fox.