Unable to leave well enough alone…
Image via Wikipedia Sci-Fi Wire reported these two little tidbits recently:
Universal Pictures has acquired film rights to the late Robert Jordan’s best-selling Wheel of Time series of fantasy novels in a seven-figure deal, Variety reported.
Big-screen adaptations of the books will begin with the first book in the cycle, The Eye of the World.
Rick Selvage and Larry Mondragon will produce for Red Eagle Entertainment, which published graphic-novel adaptations of Jordan’s books.
The Wheel of Time follows, among its dozens of characters, Rand al’Thor, the latest incarnation of a force for good called “The Dragon.” Rand is born to fight an evil character called Shai’tan.
The Wheel of Time books have sold 44 million copies worldwide and have spawned computer, trading-card and role-playing games; a soundtrack; comic books; and numerous fan sites. The four most recent installments have reached number one on the New York Times best-seller list.
Jordan died last year at 58, but the final book in the series is still set for publication in fall 2009, with fellow fantasy scribe Brandon Sanderson writing the novel’s conclusion from Jordan’s notes and tapes. (Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.)
and this….
Dirk Blackman and Howard McCain have been hired to rework the script for Conan–as in “The Barbarian”–for Lionsgate, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The writing team’s action-adventure screenplay Amazon, meanwhile, is heading for Lionsgate as well, the trade paper reported. It’s an epic about female warriors to which Scarlett Johansson has been attached.
Director searches are under way for both.
Chief executive and president of Paradox Entertainment Fredrik Malmberg is producing the Conan film with Boaz Davidson, Joe Gatta and Avi Lerner of Millennium Films.
Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer (Sahara) wrote earlier drafts of the film, a potential resurrection of the classic warrior created by Robert E. Howard in dozens of pulp stories published in the 1930s. In 1982, Oliver Stone and John Milius wrote a bloody adaptation, which Milius also directed, that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Lionsgate hopes to reboot the Conan feature universe to produce a new, post-millennial franchise by going back to Howard’s original stories, with the idea to create a $100 million R-rated origin film, the largest production to date for Lionsgate and Millennium.
Now you might think I would be thrilled at the prospect of Wheel being made into a series of movies, or that Conan is finally coming back to the big screen.
I’m not.
Hollywood isn’t capable of doing either project right. Not anymore.
There was a time when Hollywood had actual men and women of creativity. People who would take on a project with a measure of devotion to the story and their craft. Now, its become more of a money-grab than anything else. This is why re-boots are so goddamn popular to studios, directors, and producers. It’s a way of cashing in on a story that has already been told. There are some exceptions to this rule, but they are rare. Now just about every movie being made is either a reinvention of a previous film, or some intentionally stupid humor bullshit like Harold and Kumar.
As for Robert Jordan’s works made into film, lets just say I am not holding my breath. Jordan’s works are so complex (the size of each book is evidence to that fact) that it would be nearly impossible to make into a film without gutting it considerably. The problem is once you start gutting that story, its can unravel pretty quickly. In order to make it work, the story would have to be effectivtly re-written to accomodate the film medium. Robert Jordan is no longer with us, and he is the only one I would trust with such a re-write, so keep your dirty little fingers to yourself please.
Some creations are better left to their original iterations, and some are better off not being converted to a movie screen. If Hollywood wants to regain some measure of respect again, they are going to have to dig deep to find original stories with actual substance.
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