Filmmaker Bob Dolman ("The Banger Sisters") will bring Thomas Rockwell's popular book "How to Eat Fried Worms" to the big screen for Walden Media and New Line Cinema, according to Variety. The story focuses on "an 11-year-old boy whose first day in school devolves into a battle with the school bully. It leads to a dare that the youth can't eat 10 worms in one day."

The studios are shooting for a late-summer 2006 release for "Worms," which is an adaptation that's been wriggling around Hollywood for quite some time. (Screenwriter John August got his first big break, several years ago, by penning a draft for Ron Howard.) Head Walden honcho Cary Granat seems thrilled about the project: "It is a classic kids book, but the thing that most appealed to me is that it is the seminal book on anti-bullying."