News Release

Tom the Dancing Bug Character Optioned for Movie: New Line Cinema Retains 'Harvey Richards: Lawyer for Children'

Los Angeles  (03/18/2005)  "Harvey Richards: Lawyer for Children," one of Ruben Bolling's delightfully absurd characters from the alternative comic strip "Tom the Dancing Bug," has been optioned by New Line Cinema for a feature film, Bolling and Universal Press Syndicate announced today.

Harvey Richards is a lawyer for children who uses kids' laws to help settle everything from playground disputes to ever-tenuous parent-child negotiations. Bolling said that creating and writing for the character helped prepare him for his negotiations with Hollywood, "although the New Line executives got a little annoyed when I kept holding up a stapler and shouting, 'Touch Black, No Backs,' every time we agreed on a point."

"Tom the Dancing Bug" is a free-form sketch-comedy comic strip that not only features Harvey Richards, but numerous other characters, such as: God-Man, the omnipotent superhero; Charley, the australopithecine; Billy Dare, boy adventurer; Sam Roland, the detective who dies; and Dinkle, the unlovable loser.

"Tom the Dancing Bug" is seen weekly in more than 75 newspapers and Web sites including: The Washington Post, The Village Voice, Salon.com, MSNBC.com and Hong Kong's HK magazine. "Tom" is the 2002 and 2003 winner of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies' award for Best Alternative Comic Strip. It's also been collected in three books, "Tom the Dancing Bug" (HarperCollins), "All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned From My Golf-Playing Cats" (NBM Publishing) and "Thrilling Tom the Dancing Bug Stories" (Andrews McMeel Publishing).

New Line Cinema is the force behind such recent smash-hit cinematic properties as The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Austin Powers franchise, "Elf," "About Schmidt" and many more.

"We couldn't be more excited to work with New Line. Their love of the character and for Ruben's genius made it a great fit for everyone," said Bridget McMeel of AMUSE, Universal Press Syndicate's division for bringing its talent to Hollywood. Bolling, McMeel and John Glynn of AMUSE will co-produce "Harvey Richards" with New Line and Deviant Films producers Tim Peternel, Dave Hillary, Doug Wroan and Silver Nitrate Entertainment’s Ash Shah.

Universal Press Syndicate is the world's largest independent newspaper syndicate and is responsible for the syndication of some of the world's most influential comics of the past four decades: Doonesbury, Ziggy, Cathy, For Better or For Worse, The Far Side, Calvin & Hobbes, FoxTrot, Boondocks, Pooch Café and many more. For more information and for samples of Tom the Dancing Bug and Bolling’s bio, please go to ucomics.com

For more information, contact Kathie Kerr at 800-255-6734, ext. 6945 or kkerr@amuniversal.com

Creator(s): Ruben Bolling

Contact(s): Kathie Kerr

Search News Releases