Josh Brolin and Tim Burton are teaming up to bring The Hunchback of Notre Dame to the big screen.  Warner Bros. is developing the project with the duo, and is bringing onboard writers Kieran and Michele Mulroney, who also wrote the upcoming Sherlock Holmes sequel for the studio.

Hunchback, a novel written in 1831 by Victor Hugo, tells the story of Quasimodo, a deformed and hunchbacked bell-ringer of the Notre Dame cathedral who falls in love with a beautiful gypsy named Esmerelda.

The book was first adapted in 1905 into a film titled Esmerelda, and the last major adaptations of the book were in 1997, the year that saw both a high-profile Disney animated flick and an action-packed version starring Mandy Patinkin and Salma Hayek.

The book features Quasimodo fighting off troops, love, betrayal, a hanging, a swing off a bell tower, and bodies and graves galore  -- right up Burton’s alley.

The project is in the very beginning stages or production, though. Brolin would produce as well as star, and Burton is in preproduction already for Dark Shadows for Warner Bros., and is interested in Hunchback, but his commitment is largely dependent on the script that’s yet to be written.

If this does come to fruition, it would be Brolin’s second jab at playing a deformed character, after starring as the title character in Warner Bros.’ Jonah Hex, a Western featuring the facially scarred DC comics anti-hero.

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