"A Sound of Thunder" Movie This Summer

Syberghost writes "Ray Bradbury's classic short story "A Sound of Thunder" is being released thus summer as a movie. It's directed by Peter Hyams, who's done the time travel thing before, but it appears that some of the major characters from the Bradbury story aren't in the credits."

Comments

A whole movie?

[mikeophile]

Here's what the Man himself has to say.

Re:A whole movie?

[ozzy_cow]

Currently my film "A Sound of Thunder" is being filmed in Czechoslovakia

Out of all the people that still think that Czechoslovakia is still one country, I would not expect Ray Bradbury be one of them... I mean cmon! They separated in 1993! Czech Republic and Slovakia godamn it! Two very different countries with different languages, goverments and culture.

Re:A whole movie?

[SEE]

Oh, yes, sure, Czechosolvakia ceased to exist . . . in this timeline. Who knew stepping on a snail would have such an effect?

I hope...

[HughDario]

they don't accidently harm any animals in the making, wouldn't that be a shame?

Re:I hope...

[Wavicle]

I'm sure nobody would really notice if they killed a butterfly...

Cool!

[isNaN]

Yes!

This is awesome! I have been waiting for a sci-fi remake of Sound of Music! Finaly!

Is this Really the Same Story?

[TheWanderingHermit]

I just read the synopsis in the link.

To me, the original story was a great short. The ending was perfect and there was a great timing to everything.

But to make it movie length, it sounds like the bulk of the plot in the movie takes place after the ending of the story. If you want to make a story about time travel changing the present, why ruin a great short by turning it into a preface to another story? Why not just come up with a simple reason history is changed and THEN tell the story about dealing with the changes?

I love Ray Bradbury's stories. There's a wonderful sense of timing, rhythm, playfulness, poetry, horror, and fun. It sounds like some of the most important elements of what makes a Bradbury story so good are being ignored here.

Maybe, instead of wasting the time and money to see this, I'll find a DVD of Francois Truffaut's adaption of Farheinheit 451 and watch that instead.

Re:Is this Really the Same Story?

[TheWanderingHermit]

Maybe the language change would change more, maybe not. It's a short story.

I read it for the first time in 8th grade and hadn't re-read it for decades (not that I avoided it, but I'm not much on re-reading -- except for Shakespeare). It had such a strong impact on me I that I remembered most of it, almost scene-by-scene.

To me that's effective. If it weren't, I'd have forgotten it like I did most of the stories in that anthology, but this story made such a strong impression I remembered many parts of it clearly for decades.

I write myself, and I would feel that any story I wrote that had that strong an impact on a reader was a definite success. Maybe some technical details were wrong (who knows -- we don't have the experiece to be sure), but any story that can leave an impression that lasts for decades is worth recognition.

Re:Is this Really the Same Story?

[mm0mm]

When the Hollywood picks up a novel and makes a film based on it, the film version becomes a separate entity from the novel. Keep in mind that the director will make the film according to HIS interpretations of the same story we've read. In addition the studio, producers and director will alter the settings and the story line in the way they want to so that the film becomes more suitable for their targeted audiences. It is extremely rare for a director to have enough (political) power during the development stage to maintain the authenticity of the novel. As a result, the finished film will be losely resembling to the book.

The author of the original novel is usually credited ambiguously as "story by" or "based on." Actual writing for the film is done by an army of screenwriters and script doctors, who will receive little credits (if they are lucky!). The only reason the studio gives credit to the author of the novel is so that they won't be involved in legal troubles. Well-known writers with a household name also have added value for the marketing of the film.

When you see a film based on a novel, don't expect to see what you read in the original novel --because no film director can beat what your imagination can create. Films hit your vision. Novels speak to your heart.

Re:Is this Really the Same Story?

[TheWanderingHermit]

The credits "story by" and "based on" are two entirely DIFFERENT credits, with different meanings. "Based on" means the script (or outline) is based on a story, novel, poem or other work that was pre-existing and (except in a few cases) was written for it's own sake, and not intended to be part of the process of making a movie. If I write a novel, even if I am hoping it will be turned into a movie, and a producer buys rights and someone else does all the writing form then on, I'd get a "based on" credit.

"Story by" means someone wrote the story for the screenplay under contract. I'll use ST: Next Gen as an example (I'd doing this because I came very close to selling to them and had essentially an open door to pitch to them until G.R. died and some things got reshuffled -- it's a TV show, not a movie, but the points are the same). When I pitched a story to Trek, if they bought it, they would likely pay me for the story. I'd write up a story (NOT a screenplay), broken down into acts to give the general outline of the story, along with some sense of the timing of the plot. If I'm lucky, and they think I can do it, THEN they'd offer me the chance to write the script. If you look at the credits on ST:TNG (and many TV shows), often there is a credit "Story by" -- that means that writer wrote the story, but (in most cases) someone else took that story (or outline) and actually wrote the script.

It'd be possible for one person (called Author) write a novel, a producer to buy rights, and assign a writer (called Adaptor) to write a story outline to base a script on, and to pay yet another writer (called ScreenWriter) to write the script. In true Hollywood style, they'd probably hire yet another writer (called Rewriter) to re-write the script (whether it needed or not). The credits would be something like:

Based on the novel by Author.

Story by Adaptor.

Written by
ScreenWriter
And
ReWriter

I can't remember for sure, but I think "&" was used to indicate to writers working together (like "Jane & John Doe") and "and" was used to distingiush between writers that worked on different drafts.

Re:Is this Really the Same Story?

[TheWanderingHermit]

If you're interested in some good background on Hollywood from a writer's perspective, read up on J. Michael Straczynski's posts in r.a.s.t.b5.moderated or any of the other archives. JMS is the brain behind Babylon 5 (for those that don't know). He points out the many ways writers are screwed over, but he also demonstrated, by his own career, how that can be overcome.

Actually, it's not that producers regard the credits lightly, it's that they don't want to give them out. I remember a discussion on the 'net once about how someone said they'd be eager to write something for nothing more than credit. They didn't realize that credit is a big thing to Screenwriters beyond just getting their name on the screen. For example, to get in the Writers Guild of America, you need to have done a certain amount of "professional" work. I forgot the details, but I think it could be 2 scripts of 1 hour TV length, or 1 feature film. Since much of the industry runs on fear (and the need to outdo everyone else), people can be very stingy on letting people get credit. It can be used later in negotiations and to help one advance in a career. If you're a Hollywood producer, you don't want a write to move up, otherwise you'll pay them more the next time, and might have to make other concessions.

All this mess is a big reason why, after Trek shifted, I gave up on trying to write for TV or film out there. While the Trek people were pretty cool and not as weird as others, that was an isolated situation. Instead I busted my butt for years and will soon have my own production company (built on the company I have now). I'll be able to write my scripts and produce and direct them on my own terms. They won't be on the big screen (at least for a while), but they'll be what I want and there won't be a team of writers/producers/directors 2nd guessing everything I write. There'll be no test screenings to force re-editing and the whole cast and crew will focus on nothing but making the best production possible. When it's done, we distribute it on DVD.

It's not the level of fame and money I'd get from a studio, but it means I'll be one of the few writers alive who can write what they want and make sure it gets put on screen the way it was intended, not the way it'll be after a dozen people piss on the script like a dog does on a tree to say, "I'm here, look at me!"

oh wonderful

[nomadic]

Considering what they did to I, Robot, I've got a bad feeling about this.

Re:oh wonderful

[nomadic]

There have been very, very few. Francois Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 for example. 2001 for another (even if you don't consider it "based" on the 2001 novel, it was based on the short story "The Sentinel").

And actually I don't even mind them changing the story, as long as they do a good job. Like I think Blade Runner is an amazing movie. Yes, it's a completely different story than the book, but I don't think the story in the book would have translated into a movie that well. But the recent fad to turn brilliant, intellectual science fiction novels into action movies is just depressing.

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Hi! I'm a butterfly!

[Emot]

Stoming on me will destroy the future. Probably. See, we don't really know one way or another if stomping on me while you're out romping around in the mesozoic forest ranges and shooting teerexes in their big dumb heads an attosecond before they die of way-natural causes will undo the entire space-time continuum or if things will just go on as they were before you put your inexpensive, Chinese-made knockoff Jungle Boots onto my delicate, fragile little exoskeleton.

See there friend, if you flatten me silly, there will be absolutely no way to tell if you've changed the future irreparably! As the changes you've wrought have taken place way way way long time ago in the superpast, well before you and the rest of your crazy civilization were concieved and born, these changes existed before you went back in time to stomp on me and maybe change the entire history of forever!

Who knows! All I know is that I'm a butterfly and that I like nectar. Yum nectar!

(effa why eye, Mozart in Mirrorshades was better)

Heh, I remember hearing about this one...

[Erik Fish]

Ray Bradbury has shed light on the situation that resulted in Renny Harlin departing from the A SOUND OF THUNDER movie project.

"The original story is about a man who travels back in time to look upon dinosaurs, only to be ran off the safe designated path by one of them. There, he steps upon a butterfly, altering the entire timeline to come. [Harlin said,] 'Why don't we take the butterfly out of SOUND OF THUNDER?' Can you believe that? When I heard it, I whooped with laughter. I said, 'Oh my God,... if you wanted to be accurate about being stupid, this was it.' So they fired him, and we've got a new director now."

Smart move, but I'm not sure that the guy who directed "Timecop" and "Sudden Death" was the right choice for a replacement...

My money is on the upcoming "Fahrenheit 451" directed by Frank Darabont.

For those who don't want to read the story:

[{8_8}]

Quick summary: Story takes place in 2055 where time travel is possible and occurs on a daily, regulated basis. Time Safari Inc. offers hunting safaris to any point in the past. You pick an animal, they give you big guns, send you back in time and you shoot your animal dead. Hunters are kept on anti-gravity paths in order to prevent them from changing history through the so-called butterfly effect (stomping on a blade of grass may wipe out Texas in the future, etc.)

The actual story is simple. A hunter goes back on a T-Rex safari, panics and runs off the path. He kills a butterfly in the process. The safari returns and finds the future changed for the worse. The end.

Re:For those who don't want to read the story:

[Soko]

AGhhh! You've just fucked up my timeline, as I was supposed to read the whole story from the link! Think before you post about the future!

Soko

In this case, so what if it's changed?

[HarveyBirdman]

Wasn't the original story rather unsound in its time travel mechanics?

It's the one where they go hunting the dinosaur, right? And one guy crushes a butterfly and changes history. They get back to the future and the written language is completely changed, but the result of an election merely flips, as if the written language could changed, and there'd even BE an election, much less with the same two candidates.

I even recall an interview with Bradbury where he admitted the ending was not very well thought out.

There's a much better short story (I forget who wrote it) where they send a spherical probe back in time, and a project scientists is talking to reporters. The probe bounces back and forth in history, and each time we go back to the press conference, the people slowly change from humans to weird alien creatures. At the end of the experiement, the speaker declares, "See? Nothing is chnaged!"

Re:In this case, so what if it's changed?

[ghostlibrary]

It's "Brooklyn Project" by William Tenn, aka Philip Klass, anthologized in "The Road to Science Fiction" Volume 1 or 2 or 3 (I forget which), and probably anthologized elsewhere.

This post brought to you by Insomnia[tm].

Re:In this case, so what if it's changed?

[Snuggly_Soft]

It's Vol. 3. http://users.ev1.net/~homeville/isfac/t126.htm#A27 07 It's got Dick's "We can remember it for you wholesale" in there...sweet.

Clue number one

[Earlybird]

It's a short story. Adapting a short story into a full-length feature film that remains faithful to the original story takes more talent, artistry and loyalty to the source material than anyone in Hollywood is willing, or able, to provide. This could still turn out to be a good film, of course; they don't always screw up. Although chances are they will.

I think it made an impression on most people.

[khasim]

From that one story you have hosts of other authors refering to "butterfly effects" and "quantum butterflys".

That's not a simple accomplishment given the length of the story. But then, I like a lot of his stuff.

Re:I think it made an impression on most people.

[ScottMaxwell]

From that one story you have hosts of other authors refering to "butterfly effects" and "quantum butterflys".

The term "butterfly effect" derives from the work of Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist who was an early researcher into chaos theory. (In a way, Lorenz was the first chaos theorist -- James Gleick's excellent book Chaos: Making a New Science tells the story in detail.)

Lorenz has said his choice of metaphor was not influenced by Bradbury's story (he hadn't read it). Indeed, he first phrased the idea using a seagull, not a butterfly.

So the term oughta refer to Bradbury's story, but it doesn't. :-)

they ruined the story

[Temsi]

Has anyone read up on this?

Not only have they completely missed the point of the story, they've come up with some lame ass idea in order to make an action film out of it.
The story additions don't make any sense - he wipes out humanity, so they must go back to fix it? Well, if he wiped out humanity, who is it that's going to go back exactly? And if he wiped out humanity, that's a paradox! He would have to exist in order to go back and screw up the timeline.
Of course, they solve this by using a "time wave" which hasn't caught up with our time yet (then, how did were they able to travel back?).
But if it hasn't caught up, how come their reality is "markedly different"?
This is a classic screenwriting short cut. This is the writer forcing the story to serve his master (director, producer or simply his own ego) rather than letting the story play itself out based on the setup and the characters. This is just a plot device not meant to be thought about too much... well, that's fine in a Britney Spears movie, but we're talking Bradbury here. This is a science fiction story. Science fiction stories are meant to be thought about. That's the whole point! They're not about ray-guns and futuristic technology. They're metaphors for things in OUR lives. They're about people, not technology. The technology is just a tool.

Of course, having seen the horrible Timecop, I know just how much Peter Hyams cares about logic and people in his movies, so this is not a particularly surprising turn of events.

However, I will not be spending a dime to see this movie. This is something I will download and proudly announce to the world that I did so just to protest the butchering of the story.

I would gladly shell out $10 to see this story on the big screen, if it was done by ANYONE other than Hyams, who seems to have a particular fetish for destroying Science Fiction as a genre (Capricorn One, Outland, 2010, Timecop, The Relic, End of Days). This guy hasn't made a single tolerable SciFi movie, and THIS is the guy filming one of the great sci-fi short stories of all time?

Hollywood Vs. Books

[edoc]

Someone needs to go back in time and stop all these Hollywood production companies from picking up the rights to every book/classic movie on the planet and making dry/predictable over budgeted remakes/sequels. I will obviously have to see the movie too make a final judgment however I would say the majority of remakes/sequels lately have been pretty poor quality.

Time Paradox's

[GrpA]

From my childhood reading of science fiction, I always remember Sound of Thunder(Bradbury) and Let the Ants Try(Pohl). Both had a profound effect on my way of thinking.

I spent many days as a young kid wondering if it would be possible to change history - after all if you changed the future, would the future you have gone back into the past at all?

I learned the answer many years later in electronics. In electronics, it's called "Negative Feedback"... ie, take the output signal and feed in back into the input... The output affects the input, but the signal still continues.

Now I wonder on how such a simple well thought out story can possibly change the future by altering the way people think and view the world.

Still many of Ray Bradbury's original stories still occupy parts of my idle thoughts even this much later.

That this man's writing has affected my thinking for so long and has permeated my thoughts enough to consider things I may have never considered otherwise is reason enough to see how the movie turns out...

GrpA.

R is for Rocket

[dylan.ucd]

for anyone else who enjoyed this story, check out the book that it was published in: R is for Rocket.

although 'A Sound of Thunder' is one of my favorite Bradbury stories, right up there with 'There Will Come Soft Rains' -- I think that the entire 'Maritian Chronicals' will forever be my favorite.

About the "Credits"

[gbulmash]

...it appears that some of the major characters from the Bradbury story aren't in the credits.

Don't imagine that because a character isn't listed on IMDb 4.5 months before release, the character isn't in the film. IMDb rarely has complete credits this far before release. I'm surprised the Slashdot editors let such a silly claim through.

I'm sure the folks at IMDb appreciate that you take their listings so literally, but they try to get a title into the database as soon as it's confirmed that the film is actually greenlighted. That initial listing may have nothing more than the studio, writer, director and one or two stars. Then they add more credits and other info as they become available.

I know people there. They won't have "full" / "official" credits until they get them from a studio source (a month or two before release), a press kit (a week or two before release), or if the studio is still afraid of the Internet (and some are), they get the full credits after the film is released, usually from dedicated users who sat through the credits in theaters, scribbling furiously.

- Greg

First link in article is to a copyright violation?

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

Well, Harlan Ellison wouldn't like it at all!
But at least I could read it again.From the story:

TYME SEFARI INC.
SEFARIS TU ANY YEER EN THE PAST.
YU NAIM THE ANIMALL.
WEE TAEK YU THAIR.
YU SHOOT ITT.


Wow! Bradbury predicted IRC!

Positive: It's been on TV already!!

[Kulilin]

Here!!

It seems it was not The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits after all.. It was on Ray Bradbury Theater .

Fahrenheit 9/11

[Anonymous Coward]

He's also annoyed that Michael Moore is playing off his title:

"He can't have my title," said Bradbury. "We've got an important film coming out, the book's having its 50th anniversary in October. If he wants his movie to be an homage to me, why not title it, 'Bradbury, where the hell are you now that we need you?'"

Flawed story, Flawed movie

[darkjohnson]

I almost worked on this - the script was AWFUL and way weaker than the short story. There is no logic to the premise and they successfully transferred that to the script. But..with the right amount of effects and marketing it'll probably break even.