Narnia producer ready to give gay teens a new Hero

A couple years ago, Perry Moore helped bring children's fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia to the big screen. His next project will be to bring a new gay role model to teen lit.

In Moore's first novel, Hero, Thom Creed is a gay teen with healing superpowers who has to keep a lot about himself from his dad; it's not clear how his father feels about gays but he definitely hates superpowered people. Thom eventually gains the attention of The League of Superheroes, where he's teamed with a group of offbeat rookies: a temperamental pyrokinetic, a senior citizen who can see into the future, a man who can transmit diseases and the egotistical Golden Boy. (Doesn't that sound delightfully Legion of Substitute-Heroes?)

Judging from the early reviews, openly gay Moore is definitely digging from the love of sci-fi and fantasy that got him to pursue the film rights to Narnia. It'll be interesting too see if Hero will encounter the same kind of opposition faced by other gay teen books.

Moore's a pretty busy guy. Hero meant to be the first in a series of novels about Thom Creed. Meanwhile, Moore is also working on the second Narnia film, Prince Caspian, as well as a documentary about Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak (with Spike Jonez).

Hero comes out in bookstores on September 1.