In November 2022, there was an announcement of a new Atlas Shrugged effort from a coalition of players.
This coalition had a major job ahead of them. The three “Atlas” movies of a decade ago were financed on a shoestring with the participants donating their talents in the hope that the movies would show a profit over time. To my knowledge the three movies never showed a profit.
At first I thought the new coalition was going to do it right. That would be three seasons corresponding to the three parts of the book with each season consisting of roughly five episodes. It’s the only way to do justice to the book.
Considering that I was co-author of Who is John Galt: A Navigational Guide to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, along with our own Billthedrill, I turned the first part of the book into five one-hour scripts. Upon contacting Dallas Sonnier, I discovered that they were going to handle all writing in-house. From a cost control standpoint, that made sense. I asked to be considered for a position on the production team. Then I discovered that they had shelved the project and moved on to other efforts. Their website showed “Atlas” as “S1E1,” which told me it was a placeholder and they were having trouble lining up financing.
This announcement with Founders Films tells me that they have finally come up with a partner in the position of raising the necessary financing. What astonished me is that they are planning on producing yet another three-part version. Those of us who have read the book know this is a fool’s errand. How will they be different from the failed films of a decade ago?
Yes, the only way it could work is a multi-season, multi-episode Netflix or Amazon series.