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Hitchhiker's Guide Movie Greenlighted

Posted by timothy on from the gold-brick-cast-in-velvet dept.

Overly Critical Guy writes "According to Chud, the Hitchhiker's Guide movie is a go." It's too bad DNA won't be around to see it, but good news for his fans. I hope they can borrow Weta Digital's render farm to perfect some of the characters, though anything will be an improvement on the BBC series' special effects.

6 of 411 comments (clear)

  1. A Music Video Director ? by shayera · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So.. The Guide will be really shaky, oddly cut, using all the current 'trendy' angles.. In other words.. Really really annoying ?

    I'd probably have preferred Jay Roach on the project.. alas..

    So who do y'all see as possible casts ?

    --
    Venlig Hilsen / Regards
    John Hinge - shayera / .sPOOn.
    "Buffy I love you... Please God No!" S
  2. Gaiman didn't want to by Emexies · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Neil Gaiman was here in Stockholm the other day, holding a q&a with his fans. One of the questions was "How come you aren't involved with the Hitchhiker's movie, writing the script and directing it?"
    His answer?
    "If Douglas [Adams] couldn't do it, I can't either."
    He also said that the best Hitchhiker's movie is and will always be the book, or the radio show. "Hollywood can never render Ford turning in to an infinite number of penguins better than you can in your head," as he put it.

  3. I'm cautious. by xA40D · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm of the opinion that the reason HHGTTHG: The Movie was snarled up for 20 years was Douglas himself. He had a vision, he wanted to translate it to the screen. But I'm of the opinon that he didn't really know what it was he wanted.

    Given enough time he'd have given us something I'm sure. It would have been totally different to anything he'd already given us. Would it have been any good? I'm not sure. But I'd have rushed out to the cinema to watch it.

    Okay. So now Douglas is no more. And somebody is going to translate his works into a movie. If they and take what they need from the various HHGTTG source material, adding just a dash here and there to get the pieces to mesh - great. But if they start rewriting vast tracts of Douglas's work... hideous.

    So for now I'll be cautions. I'll hope for the best. But I'm not going to celebrate just yet. After all, the movie business has a past record of raping decent stories...

    --
    Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
  4. R.I.P. Peter Jones - the voice of The Book by mccalli · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It's certainly a shame that Douglas Adams won't be around to see it (and steer it), but there's also one other key person missing.

    Peter Jones, the voice of the book. In fact, so key was he to the success that he was billed as the star (each radio episode always begins with "Starring Peter Jones, as the book"). He was utterly superb, and again gave one of those performances that fixes a thing in my mind.

    It's going to be hard for anyone to match him. Best of luck to the person that eventually gets the job, but they have some work to do.

    Cheers,
    Ian

  5. Re:Well... by Rethcir · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Secret cameo: You know the cow who wants to be eaten at the restaurant at the end of the universe? That's Peter Davison, the 5th doctor. (AKA the Shark-jumping doctor)

  6. THGTTG the TV series, according to Neil Gaiman. by Civil_Disobedient · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There are lots of good reasons to dislike the BBC's TV series (mangling of the storyline would be tops on my list) but I honestly doubt the movie will have a better Ford, Arthur, or Narrator (the Guide). Douglas Adams felt that the casting for them was perfect (and clearly nobody will ever be a better "guide" than Peter Jones). If I were to cast it, I'd put Jack Davenport (of BBC's Coupling) as Arthur, and hope Peter Jones is still alive to do the Guide.

    Also, the "Computer Graphics" of the guide will never, ever be topped. To quote from Don't Panic - The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galazy Companion written by none other than the great Neil Gaiman:

    "The graphics...were incredibly detailed, apparently computer-created animated graphics, full of sight gags and in-jokes, and presumably designed for people with freeze-frame and slow-motion videos, since there was no way one could pick up on the complexities of the graphics sequences in a single watching at normal speed. Would one have noticed, for example, the cartoons of Douglas Adams himself, posing as a Sirius Cybernatics Corporation Advertising Executive, writing hard in the dolphin sequence, and in drag as Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings? Could one have picked up on all the names and phone numbers of some of the best places in the universe to purchase, or dry out from, a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster? One of the phone numbers in the graphics of Episode Six was that of a leading computer magazine who phoned Pearce Studios, responsible for the graphics, to ask which computer it was done on, and whether a flat-screen television was built into the book prop used on the show. The comment beside the phone number was not flattering."

    The reason the TV series was, in many ways, very good, is because Adams realized with the medium of television, he had a whole new outlet for his humor that was simply impossible to do on Radio. Also, there's simply no way you can condense the book into an 1.5 hour movie. THGTTG isn't an anecdote to be shortly told with expensive special effects... it's a Decameron, a Canterbury Tales collection of stories that gives the reader (or listener, or viewer) a rolicking feeling of traveling from place to place.