The series is based on a robot boy modelled after the late son of his inventor Doctor Tenma, who passed away in a car accident.
He admits that Tom Sawyer was largely a young Sam Clemens, while Huck Finn was based on a real boy: "In Huckleberry Finn I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was.
According to popular lore, the romantic film is based on a simple formula: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again.
One key barrier to application seemed to be the university's continuing image as a white, male institution, and appointments, particularly for more senior posts, were assumed to be based on an "old boys network", rather than on merit.
The book was said to be based on a diary the boy had kept at the time and included details of alleged sexual encounters between Jackson and him.
Beautiful Boy is based on a pair of memoirs, Beautiful Boy by David Sheff and Tweak by Nic Sheff.
On one wall, a towering, hazy seascape features the small figure of a boy — based on a photograph, now lost, of Mr. Doig's 6-year-old son, the youngest of his five children — standing in a boat, nearly overwhelmed by nature.
The third major opening of the weekend, "Hearts in Atlantis," a psychological drama based on a Stephen King story about a boy's relationship with a mysterious lodger, also did reasonably well, earning $9.5 million in significantly fewer theaters than the other two, for a per-theater average of $5,440.
In "The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep," based on a novel by Dick King-Smith, a boy, Angus (Alex Etel), finds not only that, but a best friend as well, after the mysterious egg he stumbles across hatches a creature unlike any he's ever seen.
Other films in the works include "I Am David" (opening in the fall), based on a true story of a boy who escaped from a concentration camp in Communist Bulgaria; the sci-fi adventure "The Giver" with Jeff Bridges; a 3-D version of "Journey to the Center of the Earth"; and "Treasure Island".
