hollywood is hurting...

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 17 - The book has "franchise" written all over it. For 42 years, Encyclopedia Brown, boy detective, has been one of the literary world's best-known children's protagonists.

And yet, despite Hollywood's fervor to mine popular literature for the movies (paging Harry Potter), it has never made it to the silver screen. On Monday, agents for the producers Howard Deutsch and Ridley Scott sought to change that by setting in motion what they hoped would be a lively auction of the movie rights to "Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective," a trove of some two dozen books. The agents began calling all the major Hollywood studios with a package offer that included the movie rights, an action-adventure script, the rights to ancillary markets, like video games and merchandizing, and the cachet of the powerhouse filmmaker Sir Ridley.

For Mr. Deutsch, who bought the multimedia rights to the books in 1979 for $25,000, it was, he hoped, the final push to bring Encyclopedia Brown to the giant screen after myriad attempts in 25 years.