Category: film

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I, Hollywood

John Scalzi has some good things to say about I, Robot and the nature of Hollywood adaptations:

Allow me to put on my pontificating hat here and tell you an obvious truth: Hollywood doesn’t care about source material. When a major movie studio buys a novel (or in this case, a collection of stories) to adapt into a film, it stops being material of a fixed nature; it becomes suddenly fluid, and you’ll find vast chunks of the book sliding out, getting rearranged or simply being ignored for the expediencies of the filmmakers and the studio. Let me make it even more clear: It is a rare book that makes it through the film adaptation process without great violence being done to it.

And this is not always a bad thing. I think some of the most successful literary-to-film transfers have been ones in which Hollywood does what Hollywood does — substantially guts and reworks the source material to adapt it to the needs of the filmmakers. The obvious example here is Blade Runner, which is of course a mightily reworked version of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick. It’s entirely possible a filmed version that is more faithful to the original novel could have been made; on the other hand, Blade Runner is excellent. It’s a fair trade.

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Movie News

Brian Singer of X-Men is now set to helm Superman. Not sure yet what this means for the third X-Men movie…

I, Robot is #1. I guess White Chicks was sold out. And if you’re a Bjork fan, those robots might look familiar. Slate also looks at how the film gets Asimov wrong.

Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit might go to Time Warner.

Comingsoon.net interviews Natalie Portman about Garden State.

And last but not least, Beowulf: the movie? I’m sure we can blame Peter Jackson for this somehow.

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Spider-Man the Musical?

Variety is reporting (and E! Online, too, for free) that Marvel Comics has teamed up with producer Tony Adams to turn the Spider-Man franchise into a musical. Sources told Variety that the planned project would bring Julie Taymor, of Broadway’s “The Lion King,” on board to direct; Neil Jordan would write the script; and U2’s The Edge and Bono would create the music. (Be still, my heart!)

Will it happen? No comment from any of the rumored players (of course). If the project did get off the ground, though, there’s no guarantee it would be successful; E! wonders whether such a musical would be an enduring hit of Annie proportions — or a Saturday Night Fever-scale flop. Hmmm. I wonder if Tobey Maguire can dance.

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Big Damn Heros

Filming started on Joss Whedon’s Serenity a few weeks ago – keep up with the cast and screw via the official on-set weblog. But that’s no even the first set ‘leak’ – cast and crew have been posting all over the fan sites, so there’s an unofficial blog that keeps an eye out. And don’t miss the first set pics.

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Comic Book Movies.. of the FUTURE!

I saw Spiderman 2 this week… In short? It was a good comic book movie but I really wanted to slap Peter Parker around. The non-action parts (and Kirsten Dunst) completely failed to pull me in. But the Spidey fans seem to like it.

Some comic-book news has surfaced: The first picture from Electra, featuring Jennifer Garner’s character from the flop Daredevil. There are also new pictures from Halle Berry’s Catwoman and Batman Begins – Christian Bale! Liam Neeson! Gary Oldman!.

And apparently Hayden Christensen is being considered for Daredevil 2. Run, Hayden – run FAR away. This is one used leather suit you don’t want to fill.