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Hitchhikers Guide To Be Made Into A Movie
tonywestonuk writes "The Beeb are reporting that The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series will be made into a Hollywood Movie. Apparently they are getting some other script writer to finish off Douglas Adams' final installment (I pessimistically wonder how awful this will make it.). It seems a shame that Hollywood had to wait until his death before they took him seriously...."
Surely that should be 42 times?
It seems that he's sold and re-sold the script several times. Each time the project appears and gets cancelled for one reason or another, usually a total lack of comprehension.
He told a story about the time he sold it to one producer (if memory serves it was James Cameron of Aliens and Titanic fame). Anyway he worked on the script for a while in preparation for his first meeting with the producer.
When thay meeting came around the first thing that he discovered was that the producer (cameron) the man who had bought the screenplay, had never read the book. When he was talling it, Adams allowed as how the book was very long and the great man might not be able to spare the time.
However, he had read the executive treatment of the book (doubtless by the cliffs notes people), and he was very excited about the prospects for the film. But, before they could get going he wanted to discuss a few questions about the script.
He began by asserting that he loved the fact that the earth blew up in the beginning that big, powerful, awesome, domething that would grab them into their seats. However, he had a real problem with the fact that they didn't get it back. He felt that they should devote a little more time in the script to a quest to regain the lost earth (he didn't specify how). But, he said that they could deal with it.
The real issue was that whole question of life, the meaning of life was an important quest, a noble quest. It was big, and it would keep people emotionally in the movie. He also felt that it was good that they found it eventually... but... 42? Isn't that really...anticlimactic? Why isn't it an important message, meaningful, or something?
Apparently there were some other sticking points too about how little of a role Arthur Dent played. The producer really felt that he should be leading the charge more rather than hiding. In short he really felt that Arthur Dent should be more Arnold Schwartzenegger.
According to Douglas Adams it fell apart after that.
Terry Gilliam.
Schnapple
42nd post!!!
I've never quite gotten the hang of Thursdays.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
When I first read the title, I thought "Hitchhiker's Guide To Being Made Into A Movie" like the article was about a howto on being turned into a movie :)
:)
on topic:
Wasn't there already a movie made of this? Or was it just one book? (sorry for my ignorant attempt at on-topic-ness
--
Seeing is believing; You wouldn't have seen it if you didn't believe it.
This makes no sense at all. How many book do they intend to span with the first movie? I would think they would have a hard time doing justice to even the first book in a single movie. If they are going to get to the final book it will be a disaster. There is certainly no reason to do anything with the final book until after they see if the first movie is a hit.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Forget about the book, watch the movie again and ask yourself: who were the bad guys?
Paul Verhoeven and Edward Neumeier.
Paul
Clearly, the only man who can play Zaphod is Bruce Campbell. Just pull out your copy and let his voice read some of the lines in your head. Trust me, Bruce is the only man who could deliver, "If there's anything more important than me, I want it caught and shot." (Yeah, I probably misquoted. I'm too lazy to reach the two feet away my copy is sitting and look it up.)
I hope someone gets this script to Bruce... I'd love to see the role go to him.
Instead of stealing Disaster Area's ship, they steal a super-evolving species' war ship. The TV series most likely changed it because they couldn't find a ravenous bug-bladder beast of trall in time. Read the Book or listen to the radio series (IMO they are much better).
The reason that changed was because the Haggunennon sequence of the radio series (together with most of episodes 5 and 6 of the radio series) was written by John Lloyd who was called in to help out as Adams was too busy working on Doctor Who to complete the scripts in time.
Adams took out all of John Lloyd's material when he wrote the book - which rather surprised Lloyd as he'd thought they were going to write the book together. Lloyd did write The Meaning Of Liff with Adams though.
"Information wants to be paid"