On March 4, 2015, "Deadline Hollywood" reported that MGM had re-acquired the rights to produce a new film based on the original novel "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH". The film will be produced by the team of Daniel Bobker and Ehren Kruger, with screenplay by "Ice Age" series writer Michael Berg. It will be James Madigan's directorial debut. It is planned as a CGI/live-action hybrid of "The Smurfs" and "Alvin and the Chipmunks", and will be "an origin story in which an imperiled mouse protagonist befriends a comical crew of lab rats as they turn hyper-intelligent. They escape a secret laboratory and become the great minds of vermin civilization, forced to outwit the humans hot on their tails." The studio plans to turn the novel into a family franchise.