Looks like a no-nonsense kind of guy.
Posted on 06/08/2003 1:41:51 PM PDT by RJCogburn
Fans of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged have heard this one before: the movie rights have been sold and the enduring bestseller is coming to the silver screen.
Admirers of the epic 1957 novel may be skeptical of the news that Beverly Hills-based Crusader Entertainment bought the rights to Rand's story of the mind on strike.
Past attempts to make Atlas Shrugged into a movie have failed, though Crusader president and CEO Howard Baldwin is arguably better prepared than his predecessors. He has read Rand's gigantic novel, he has hired a top screenwriter and -- consistent with Rand's literary philosophy -- he's already thinking larger than life.
"Our goal is to adapt the book without any restrictions," Baldwin said during an exclusive interview with Box Office Mojo from his office in Beverly Hills. Baldwin said it's too early to peg the project as a three-hour movie, a miniseries or even a trilogy. "It may be two movies, it may be three," he teased. "We want to tell Atlas Shrugged properly."
That's no easy task. The novel, over 1,000 pages long, presents the essential principles of Rand's radical philosophy of self-interest, reason and capitalism.
While Atlas Shrugged is routinely vilified by left-wing intellectuals, who oppose Rand's view that capitalism is the only moral economic system, and repudiated by those on the right, who shudder at Rand's rejection of religion, it remains deeply loved by readers, who named it the second most influential book of their lives in a 1991 Library of Congress/Book-of-the-Month club survey -- behind only the Bible.
As a movie, its potential to move audiences is profound. Today's times seem taken straight from the pages of Atlas Shrugged: New York City at the core of a disastrous climax, businessmen under government persecution, chronic train wrecks and the slow, grinding halt of society's basic functions. The Ayn Rand Institute describes it as "Ayn Rand's complete philosophy, dramatized in the form of a mystery story 'not about the murder of a man's body, but about the murder — and rebirth — of man’s spirit."
Baldwin said Crusader became interested last year after billionaire businessman and Crusader Entertainment Chairman Philip Anschutz -- himself the recent target of government regulators -- noticed a front page USA Today article about the tremendous influence of Atlas Shrugged among business leaders.
"Phil gave me a call and said, 'Can we get this?'" It didn't hurt that one of Baldwin's friends, businessman Ed Snider, was cited in the article. Snider had previously owned the movie rights to Atlas Shrugged, and put Baldwin on track to buy them.
Baldwin projected a long development -- funded by Crusader -- though he said he expects a script treatment by the end of this summer. Screenwriter James V. Hart (Contact, Tuck Everlasting, Bram Stoker's Dracula), who penned Crusader's Sahara starring Matthew McConaughey, is writing the script.
Crusader is the latest entertainment company to take a crack at Atlas. Rand, who died in 1982 at age 77, sold the rights to producer Albert S. Ruddy (The Godfather) in 1972 -- but a movie was never made. Later, writer and producer Stirling Silliphant (In the Heat of the Night, The Towering Inferno) wrote a script for an NBC television miniseries -- which was killed by NBC executive Fred Silverman.
In 2000, Turner Network Television sought to make an original miniseries, with Albert Ruddy as producer -- but the deal fell apart in the wake of AOL's merger with TimeWarner and the devastating Sept. 11 attack by Islamic terrorists. Ruddy later tried to make a feature-length movie but his contract expired before he could secure financing.
Baldwin said Crusader is prepared to tackle the obstacles associated with such an ambitious undertaking. In keeping with Rand's view that making money is virtuous, Baldwin said he fully expects to make a profit from Atlas Shrugged.
"Atlas Shrugged is not going to be a low budget movie," Baldwin said. "But I think the box office potential is huge, because of the enormous interest. It is one of the best-selling books of all time."
Hmmmmmmmm..........He certainly has an interesting list of past accomplishments. I used to think that this book was undoable, but with the technical success of Peter Jackson's LOTR {which translates INTO Box Office success} I now believe that this novel can be made in all its Glory, Meaning and Philosophical Truth. The right person CAN do it. Maybe he's the one?
Thanks.
Your posts are an example of the first. You make a statement - which is really a conclusion - without any information or evidence to back it up, and expect the readers to accept your statement without question as if it were a philosophical primary; Swallow it whole, in other words. That is simply a ploy to end all discussion. (And besides, do you think anyone here on FR actually cares what you feel about something?)
The second type of journalist presents evidence and allows the reader to make the judgement whether the material is "crap" or not. That is what is missing from your lame posts.
I find it fascinating that so many people such as yourself exude a visceral hatred of Ayn Rand. I suppose it is an example of the same type of mentality that "feels" it is OK to kill Israeli children or abortion doctors in "the name of God".
Give me Morgan Freeman, or give me Kenneth Branagh....
;-)
Looks like a no-nonsense kind of guy.
Arnold Schwarzenegger as John Galt
Jim Carrey as Hank Rearden
J-Lo as Dagny Taggart
In 1943, in the midst of WWII, Italian film-makers did an excellent-- and faithful-- adaptation of Rand's We the Living. Since Italy was under the boot at the time, the Nazis simply refused to release it-- because they got it right!
It's available on video. In Italian with subtitles and worth watching.
I suspect you are right about Ethan Clive. I doubt he can produce two rational objections to Rand and would focus any rant produced towards either Rand's atheism or that her works on ideaology are too ideaological.
The movie was crap but either by accident or design, the scene with Ironside as the history instructor was more or less faithful to the book. That violence has to be used to squash violence and that there are concepts not only worht fighting for but also dying for - freedom, liberty, honor. Unfortunately, the concept of going back to war to rescue one POW kept by the enemy never made it into the film. Too much for people to handle.
I read this book around the same time that I converted to the Catholic faith. Though I am not as smart as Heinlen I have come around to believe that while the teachings of Jesus is right and proper - love the Lord, love your neighbor, love yourself, turn the other cheek, live a peaceful life - I have also come to believe that there are people that must do things that while maintaining the freedom and liberty of the majority, dooms their souls.
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