'Frankenweenie' Writer John August Talks Working With Tim Burton, Apps & The 'Big Fish' Musical

One of Burton and August's most beloved collaborations, "Big Fish," is about to see new life as a big Broadway musical set to debut next spring. Burton is not involved at all in the new iteration, though. "This is all me and Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen who produced the movie," August said. "We had to go back and get Daniel Wallace's novel again and reacquire the script from Columbia Pictures. It's been a really long process but it's been amazing." The transfer of "Big Fish" from screen to stage mirrors the adaptation of "Frankenweenie" from teeny tiny short to big animated feature. August said: "It's a chance to take a new look at something I was very familiar and look at it in a new format. It's not unlike 'Frankenweenie' in that now there's a chance to look at it in a different version with new possibilities."

August has a slew of new, non-Burton-related projects coming up, including a live-action movie at Fox called "School for Monsters," which August says is out to directors and which he described as, "A chance to do some stuff in movies that I've wanted to do for a while, to take some genres and turn them on their head." He's also got a television show called "Chosen" in development with "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" creator Josh Friedman. "I hadn't planned on doing TV this year but I had lunch with Josh and over lunch he said, 'Hey, if you ever want to do a TV show, you could write it and I could take over.' And I said, 'Actually I kind of do.' It happened very fast. But you never know what's going to go to series." When we pressed for a description of the series, August said it was, "A family drama with a very unusual supernatural aspect."

After working on the "Big Fish" musical and a series of high-profile for-hire gigs (saying nothing of the hush-hush script doctoring he does on the side), August is eager to return to writing and directing for the first time since 2007's "The Nines," which was first seen as largely impenetrable but has accumulated a cult following since its release. "I think I know what I want to do," August said. "Maybe not a giant movie but it won't be as small as 'The Nines'… But hopefully accessible enough. And not as cerebral and brain-splitting as 'The Nines' was."

And if all that wasn't enough, August runs a website that he oversees, complete with podcasts on the art of screenwriting and downloadable apps that do everything from "melting" PDF files to files that you can easily edit to watermark multiple screenplays. We wondered what drove him to hand out these tips. "I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, and I watched movies but had no idea that movies were written," August explained. "I realized that if I was a teenager today anywhere outside of Los Angeles I would be going onto the internet to find out about screenwriting. If I was going online to look into screenwriting I would be grateful for someone giving honest advice." He seems just as proud of his website as he is from his Oscar-nominated features. But he also just wants to be part of the informational surge of the internet. "The resources that are out there are amazing if I can be one of those resources then that would be incredible."

"Frankenweenie" opens this Friday.