Shadowmancer: According to the Variety, a producer and financier who've made no films have paid a fortune to secure screen rights to "Shadowmancer," a fantasy novel that has drawn comparisons to the "Harry Potter" series.

The deal is the latest chapter in the unlikely "Shadowmancer" saga. Taylor is a former punk rock promoter-turned-policeman-turned-vicar who presides over St. Mary's Church on the Yorkshire coast, some 300 miles north of London. When an injury shelved his golf game, Taylor wrote an 18th-century ghost story about three children's battle against an evil vicar out to control the world who has the ability to enlist the dead as his forces.