Posts tagged with movie-adaptations
Signs of life
And in other adaptation news, the long-rumored TV version of Neil Gaiman's American Gods has finally been greenlit. I still have queasy flashbacks to certain details featured in this novel, despite reading it nearly 15 years ago, but...
Anyone else
UGH. The dread Kenneth Branagh is apparently in talks to direct a film adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. I can't stand Branagh, a pedestrian director whose work has always been inexplicably over-praised...
News re: Newt
According to NPR, J.K. Rowling recently indicated on Twitter that there is an American equivalent of Hogwarts. She's keeping the name and location of the school under wraps for the time being (apparently, it might play a role in the upcoming film adaptation of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them), but...
Eh.
The first trailer is out for Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 (and don't think I don't have a little rage flare-up every time I have to write out that stupidly long title). The film looks fine, I guess. I'm sure it...
Grim death/Oscar bait
The first trailer is out for Everest, the upcoming film based on Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air, about the 1996 Mount Everest disaster...
Eyeshadow + MURDER!
They've released the teaser trailer for Justin Kurzel's upcoming film adaptation of Macbeth, and it looks extremely videogame-y. I'm actually more excited about last month's DVD release of the recent adaptation of Cymbeline...
Sleepless nights ahoy
Variety recently posted an update on Cary Fukunaga's upcoming film adaptation of Stephen King's It. The story will be split into two films (one featuring the characters as children; the other as adults), the scripts for both films are ready, and...
Update: Marvel still full of jackasses
io9 put together a very helpful summary of the main talking points surrounding the fan reaction to Joss Whedon's depiction of the Black Widow in Avengers: Age of Ultron. It's a quick but comprehensive read, and will bring anyone up-to-date on the whole kerfluffle who doesn't want to wade through a million pages' worth of Internet commentary...
No. Just... no.
I thought the webseries The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was a cute, if far-fetched, idea that stretched on a little too long. I didn't actually finish it, but I definitely liked the first third or so, and I can see why it was such a success. But I am not sold on the visual appeal of these...
Well, good luck to them.
E.L. James does not strike me as a woman who is big on self-reflection. I'm not judging her (clearly, her bank balance is proof that she's getting something right), but a lot of the people who worked with her on the first Fifty Shades of Grey movie have...
They can't sell us a Black Widow movie, but they can sell Ant-Man?
The first trailer is out for the upcoming Marvel movie Ant-Man, starring Paul Rudd. I really like Rudd, and Marvel has succeeded in transforming even dorkier characters (like, say, a talking, trigger-happy raccoon) into...
The unwelcome return of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl
And in other movie news, the trailer for the movie adaptation of John Green's Paper Towns recently hit the interwebs. Frankly, I'm even less excited about this than I am about the Little Women movie...
Little Women Strike Back
According to THR, Sony is planning another film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, with Sara Polley as the probable writer/director. I'm not much of a Little Women fan, but it is an important piece of American literature, so I guess I'm in favor of another movie version...
"The dean of American science fiction writers"...?
According to THR, Bryan Singer plans to direct an adaptation of Robert Heinlein's classic 1966 sci-fi novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I'm not a big Heinlein fan—I find his portrayal of sex to be straight-up creepifying...
Anais Nin is rolling in her grave
Much to my horror, THR recently posted an article about several romantic/erotic novels that (thanks to the unexpected success of the Fifty Shades movie) may now be adapted into films. Their list includes Anna Todd's After, a self-published story that started off as a long-running One Direction fanfic...
The benefit of low, low expectations?
Slate just posted a largely positive review of Dakota Johnson's portrayal of Anastasia Steele, the main character in the film version of Fifty Shades of Grey. Sure, they're pretty nasty about the movie itself...
Sign me up
According to Variety, Whit Stillman's upcoming film Love and Friendship—based on Jane Austen's novella Lady Susan—is finally showing signs of life. Kate Beckinsale will play the scheming, beautiful main character, while...
Take two
It looks like Marvel would like everyone to forget the 2005 and 2007 Fantastic Four movies (even though they made a fair bit of money). Now the studio wants all their movies to match, and, since the original F4 films stand out like sore, tacky thumbs, they're attempting a far more dignified re-do...
Ugly but true
If you enjoyed the 2012 cinematic hot mess Snow White and the Huntsman, there's been some fascinating—and probably accurate—speculation about the future of the series posted at LaineyGossip...
Musical fans take note.
According to FilmDivider, producer Marc Platt has confirmed that a film adaptation of Wicked is trotting along towards a 2016 release. The adaptation will be of the Broadway musical based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, rather than the book itself...
Depressing!
The trailer is out for the BBC's upcoming miniseries adaptation of Hilary Mantel's 2009 Booker Prize-winning novel Wolf Hall, which depicts Thomas Cromwell's rise to power in the court of Henry VIII...
Doom, gloom, cyborgs
And speaking of dystopian futures with creepy digital mind-control, they're making an American live-action version of Masamune Shirow's classic manga/anime Ghost in the Shell...
War and Peace on TV
The BBC recently posted a bunch of casting news about Andrew Davies's upcoming adaptation of War and Peace. Davies is best known for his widely beloved 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, but his record of thoughtful literary adaptations is inconsistent, and I have some biiiiig concerns about his take on War and Peace...
Rowling on TV
According to NPR, the BBC is planning to adapt two more of J.K. Rowling's novels for television: The Cuckoo's Calling and The Silkworm. Rowling wrote both books under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, and...
Cheeseball to the 1,000,000th power
The trailer is out for Insurgent, the second film adaptation of Veronica Roth's Divergent series. Once again, I am stunned at how hokey literally millions of dollars' worth of CGI can look...
Thus far: meh.
The French trailer is out for the upcoming film version of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's famous novella The Little Prince, and it appears to be 90% Pixar; 10% Dave McKean...
Congratulations, mom!
My mother is prone to long, ongoing obsessions with totally random subjects, where she reads everything she can on the issue and accumulates an encyclopedic knowledge of details of no interest to anyone but herself. Her latest fixation is on Scientology's ongoing legal disputes, so...
Maybe a B+?
Word and Film recently posted a generally positive review of BBC One's adaptation of P. D. James's Death Comes to Pemberley. I wasn't impressed by the reviewer's argument that Pride and Prejudice is constructed around the "central question" of Darcy's feelings...
There's a demand for this?
Yesterday THR reported that Netflix is planning to adapt Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events into a TV show. I'm a little taken aback, seeing as the 2004 movie adaptation of this series didn't make enough money to justify a franchise...
TIGERS!
According to ComingSoon.net, Shekhar Kapur has signed on to direct a film adaptation of Tiger's Curse, based on Colleen Houck's New York Times-bestselling series of the same name. I've never read these books (I'm sorry, but that cover art totally reads "Updated Lisa Frank" to me), but...