The best directors juggle about 18 projects at a time before finally pulling the trigger on one. Steven Spielberg’s in various stages of making The Adventures of Tintin, an Abraham Lincoln biopic, a Ghost in the Shell live action film, a movie about the Chicago 7, the life story of Martin Luther King, and was fast-tracking a remake of Harvey before dropping that idea a few months ago. After he wraps his Facebook movie, David Fincher is developing adapations of the graphic novels Black Hole and Torso, remakes of the major boobage animated anthology Heavy Metal and the 1975 horror film The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, and a romantic comedy about cooking with Keanu Reeves (?). And with a production slate befitting our greatest living director, Martin Scorsese tops them all: having just wrapped the pilot for the upcoming HBO series Boardwalk Empire, he will next finish editing a documentary about George Harrison, and then adapt Shusaku Endo’s 1966 novel Silence about Jesuit missionaries in Japan, make The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt with frequent collaborator Leonardo DiCaprio, and somehow find time to direct a film about Frank Sinatra officially sanctioned by his family.

Add another one to the slate! The Guardian today reports that Scorsese is putting all of those on hold, and that his next film will be a live action version of Brian Selznick’s Caldecott Medal-winning novel/picture book/graphic novel/flip book The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Scorsese snapped up the project after Ice Age director Chris Wedge dropped out, a quality upgrade tantamount to Robert DeNiro replacing the guy who plays Mohinder on Heroes (yep, that show still exists!).

Cabret seems like a perfect fit for Scorsese, an endlessly versatile filmmaker who likely wants to direct a film appropriate for his young daughter, and furthers the highbrow children’s movie trend that includes Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are, Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland and Wes Anderon’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. The Guardian on the deep vein of film appreciation that runs through the book: “The author is a distant relation of David O Selznick, the famed producer of Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, and his book is filled with cinematic references, including a supporting role for the legendary film-maker George Méliès, who moonlights as a toy-maker.”