Via Alison Willmore of IFC: Sam Mendes has signed on to direct the big-screen adaptation of Joseph O'Neill's NETHERLAND with a script by Christopher Hampton ("Atonement"). First thought: I hope he shoots it here in New York! I'll get out my dress whites.
Mendes has two other adaptations in the pipeline which may be of interest, George Eliot's MIDDLEMARCH and the Garth Ennis/ Steve Dillon comic PREACHER.
Previously: I went to an O'Neill reading; I read NETHERLAND and tried to decide whether it was overrated.
4 days ago
7 comments:
PREACHER?!?! For serious?
Yes, but not right away.
I'm really curious about the Middlemarch project--is it for theatrical release? If so, how will they ever make it short enough? And if they do, will I be able to bear to watch it?
How they make it short enough is by hiring the guy who wrote the 1994 BBC miniseries of "Middlemarch," according to this article. I guess he'd know what to cut?
The screenwriter in question also adapted the famous Colin Firth "Pride and Prejudice"... and the screenplays for both "Bridget Jones" movies.
The BBC version of Pride and Prejudice is the balls. Middlemarch - which I've never read - probably deserves to have a definitive movie made of it. Perhaps nothing has screamed "Oscar Bait!!!" in a louder voice. Maybe they could frame it with a metafictional device where they show Mary Anne Evans having her manuscripts rejected, then finding enormous success after re-submitting them under a man's name. Because people back then were misogynist.
WG, I don't own Pride & Prejudice, but if I buy a copy will you write that endorsement on the cover?
You bet your ass I will (if I'm not too busy regulating at the Double Deuce that weekend).
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