Leaked Sony emails reveal 'Peter Rabbit' feature film is in the works

Sony Pictures is making a "Peter Rabbit" feature film, Business Insider has exclusively learned.

The film, which will be a mixture of animation and live-action, will be based on Beatrix Potter's children's book character Peter Rabbit. The antagonists of the film will be the human McGregor family.

Business Insider discovered Sony's plans to make "Peter Rabbit" in a series of leaked emails from the Sony Pictures hack published by Wikileaks, which revealed Sony was able to "make a deal" for the film back in November 2013.

In an email written by Columbia Pictures president of production Hannah Minghella on November 14th, 2013, Minghella tells then Sony Pictures co-chairmen Amy Pascal and Motion Pictures Group President Doug Belgrad that "I'm excited to report that in a flurry of activity late last night and early this morning we were able to swoop in and make a deal for Will Gluck to produce a live action hybrid version of Peter Rabbit with Animal Logic."

Minghella writes that the film "could be really special and a great family film target for us," mentioning that the "writer most recently wrote that great Alexander And The Terrible Bad Day movie for Disney which did a great job of taking a very young story and making it tonally appealing to the whole family."

The story of the film, according to Minghella, will examine "the relationship between Peter Rabbit and the other animals and their human antagonists the McGregors."

On March 19th, 2014, then Sony Pictures co-chairmen Amy Pascal wrote an email to Belgrad and another Sony executive where she referred to "Peter Rabbit" as one of Sony's "Tent Pole" films.

To date, the Peter Rabbit book series has sold more than 151 million copies and has been translated into 35 languages.

Business Insider has reached out to Sony Pictures for comment and will update this post if we hear back.