Monday, July 26, 2010

It's Happening.... but it should open in the early fall of 2012

ATLAS SHRUGGED IS FILMING
Wesley Mouch might be perfectly cast

4 comments:

revereridesagain said...

Who the hell are these people? I never heard of most of them. If they screw up this movie after all this time -- some of us have been playing "Cast Atlas" for upwards of 40 years and everyone we cast is either dead or a grandparent.

PLEASE. DO. IT. RIGHT.

And how do I get hold of this GordonAndTheWhale and slam his head (verbally of course) into the wall for suggesting that an Atlas Shrugged movie is dangerous and, I presume, must be stopped? By what, Whale Boy? Thugs? Ozero's private army? Straight out government censorship? Think they wouldn't try it -- especially if it was scheduled to come out in 2012?

Anonymous said...

I hope they don't use too much 'poetic license' and ruin it. Stick to the storyline.

SameNoKami - too lazy to login.

revereridesagain said...

Same here. (There have been some wild script ideas. Several years back apparently some producers pitched one to Leonard Peikoff -- the executor of Rand's estate -- which involved aliens. Outer space aliens. Leonard swore at them.)

I actually like the idea of a tv miniseries more than a feature film. It provides more viewer access, longer time to tell the story properly, big name stars don't matter as much. I wonder if they are planning to give it a 1950s setting or "update" it. I think it can effectively be done as a 1950s "set piece" with the railroad instead of having to "upgrade" to an airline, for example, because the moral/political message is universal and the less it gets bogged down in period-specific details the better. It has enormous potential if they do it right.

The drawback of the tv vs. feature film is that this movie is going to be savagely attacked and the miniseries format brings it closer to the enemy's front lines, as it were. As can be seen by whaleboy's or whatever his name is comments about how it is "dangerous", the Left will go all out to sink this.

OK, here's weird. The word verification is "flatrand". I blamd Whaleboy.

revereridesagain said...

There is more info and a video at http://www.atlassociety.org/filming-atlas-shrugged-wraps1

This is looking a bit more encouraging. It's an indie film and will be released in 3 parts, which means the third part could hit nicely right around 9/2012. The indie producer sounds very knowledgeable and sincere and pointed out that big-budget treatments such as the recent Brangelina effort can and often do go off the rails before anything gets does. That he didn't want to fail Ayn Rand and so made this effort himself seems a good sign. So far everything he and others associated say about the script shows dedication to getting the most important points across with no hedging. Can't quite tell whether it has been "updated" -- I think it has but the railroad is still at the center. Much more telling will be when we get to see the first clips. (And somebody tell Johansson to shave the beard before he plays Galt or Rand will haunt him. She hated facial hair.)