After attempts by huge celebrities including Angelina Jolie to make a movie version of Atlas Shrugged, Bruce Watson at Daily Finance tells the story of the Atlas Shrugged movie that finally will get made, with a 5-million dollar budget.
Paul Johansson, who is directing the film and playing John Galt, is best known for his work on One Tree Hill, and most of his previous directing experience has been on the set of the teen-oriented soap opera. Taylor Schilling (Dagny Taggart) and Grant Bowler (Henry Rearden) also boast TV-heavy resumes, as do most of the supporting actors. As for the script, Brian Patrick O’Toole has been tasked with transforming Rand’s 1,074-page brick into a two-hour movie. His previous scripts, Basement Jack, Evilution, and Cemetery Gates were all shlocky, low-budget horror films. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Johansson has only five weeks for principal photography.
This version of Atlas Shrugged is just a placeholder for the production company to continue to hold onto the film rights, but I really want to see it. Maybe we can arrange a midnight movie screening in Seattle? We could have the next The Room on our hands.
UPDATE: Conservative film site Big Hollywood suggests that the liberal media is out to sink the film before it even begins: Apparently, this film covers the first third of the book, and so this is the first part of a planned Atlas Shrugged trilogy, with a budget of 15 or 20 million dollars for the whole thing. Even better, I say: a 6-hour megafilm on a shoestring budget could make this Atlas Shrugged into a legend of bad film.
Ugh. And I liked Taylor Schilling. The idea that she’d suddenly be the fantasy of masturbating libertarians is pretty sad to me.
I think they should use CGI to make the entire film played by a cast of one-year-olds talking like Ring Lardner characters.
I vote for back-to-back showings of this and Battlefield Earth.
I predict that like the director’s previous works, this will also be a shlocky, low-budget horror film.
I cant wait to play an Atlas Shrugged drinking game.
I couldn’t be more excited about this. Ayn Rand deserves nothing more than to have her moronic book turned into a shitty, low-budget piece of garbage.
@1 – Count me in as grossed out that Taylor Schilling will be involved. I like her.
Oh, this film deserves to be Sweded like no other.
Not my quote:
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
Roger Corman once made a terrible Fantastic Four movie just to hold onto the rights. It’s more entertaining than the big budget version that actually made it to the theaters.
The only good Libertarian is one whose home and forehead have been tagged repeatedly.
I’ve only seen the movie version of “the fountainhead” with Gary Cooper in which the climax involves a long speech about the integrity of the individual and his work. This “integrity,” the full expression of one’s individuality, is apparently what Galt holds so dear. It is with much amusement that I read about the compromises of this Hollywood picture…
Well obviously it will cost $100 million if you’re making movies the commie way.
@8: I love it. I’ve been a big LOTR fan for 44 years. Never been able to read more than a page or two of Rand without getting bored and dropping it.
i made it to page 300-something before i had to throw it against the wall and i never picked it up again.
Oh what a joy it is to read such asinine imbeciles make comments on here…Some of my favorites: “I made it to page 300-something before…” before you realized that your pea brain couldn’t handle reading something with a degree of objectivity…It’s ok, Hitler had that sort of problem too, except he preferred throwing books he didn’t agree with in bonfires instead of at walls.
Or: “The only good Libertarian is one whose home and forehead have been tagged repeatedly”. Tagged? With what pray-tell? A pink triangle, or a gold star? Actually a gold dollar sign would at least be appropriate(you didn’t read the book so this reference probably doesn’t make sense to you). Wow, not only are you a fascist, but you’re a vandal too!
Or: “…Never been able to read more than a page or two of Rand without getting bored..” Thank god pharmaceutical companies invented A.D.D.! Now you’ve got an excuse for being intellectually lazy! I bet you really thought Avatar was the bee’s knees.
Or: “The idea that she’d suddenly be the fantasy of masturbating libertarians is pretty sad to me…” Fret not my child, libertarians wank to internet porn just like everyone else.
Or: “Ayn Rand deserves nothing more than to have her moronic book turned into a shitty, low-budget piece of garbage.” Honestly Jen, what page did YOU get to? Pre-emptive attacks on a film you haven’t even seen before is so George W. Bush, or Bill O’Reilly of you.
As a point of fact Ayn Rand wasn’t a ‘libertarian,’ rather she could be most aligned to anarcho-capitalism. That said, I, nor any libertarian I know completely adhere to Rand’s ‘objectivist’ philosophy. We’ll leave the personality cult worship to the Barry Soetoro lovers.
It’s a sad comedy when libertarians are ridiculed and reviled by “open-minded liberals” for believing that gays have a right to marry and openly serve in the military, pot should be legal, wars are stupid, governments are inherently corrupt and inefficient, Wall St. bankster criminals should be jailed, money should be sound and not fiat, that people should be allowed to keep what they legitimately earned, and generally mind one’s own fucking business.
This page, er city is so very full of hypocritical totalitarian mental midget statists it’s laughable. My favorite Seattle hypocrisy: Obama bumper sticker next to the popular ‘End This War!” sticker. Obama’s merely the current puppet, so I won’t spin a yarn here pointing out his allegiance to the Kleptocrats that run this country.
Oh what a joy it is to read such asinine imbeciles make comments on here…Some of my favorites: “I made it to page 300-something before…” before you realized that your pea brain couldn’t handle reading something with a degree of objectivity…It’s ok, Hitler had that sort of problem too, except he preferred throwing books he didn’t agree with in bonfires instead of at walls.
Or: “The only good Libertarian is one whose home and forehead have been tagged repeatedly”. Tagged? With what pray-tell? A pink triangle, or a gold star? Actually a gold dollar sign would at least be appropriate(you didn’t read the book so this reference probably doesn’t make sense to you). Wow, not only are you a fascist, but you’re a vandal too!
Or: “…Never been able to read more than a page or two of Rand without getting bored..” Thank god pharmaceutical companies invented A.D.D.! Now you’ve got an excuse for being intellectually lazy! I bet you really thought Avatar was the bee’s knees.
Or: “The idea that she’d suddenly be the fantasy of masturbating libertarians is pretty sad to me…” Fret not my child, libertarians wank to internet porn just like everyone else.
Or: “Ayn Rand deserves nothing more than to have her moronic book turned into a shitty, low-budget piece of garbage.” Honestly Jen, what page did YOU get to? Pre-emptive attacks on a film you haven’t even seen before is so George W. Bush, or Bill O’Reilly of you.
As a point of fact Ayn Rand wasn’t a ‘libertarian,’ rather she could be most aligned to anarcho-capitalism. That said, I, nor any libertarian I know completely adhere to Rand’s ‘objectivist’ philosophy. We’ll leave the personality cult worship to the Barry Soetoro lovers.
It’s a sad comedy when libertarians are ridiculed and reviled by “open-minded liberals” for believing that gays have a right to marry and openly serve in the military, pot should be legal, wars are stupid, governments are inherently corrupt and inefficient, Wall St. bankster criminals should be jailed, money should be sound and not fiat, that people should be allowed to keep what they legitimately earned, and generally mind one’s own fucking business.
This page, er city is so very full of hypocritical totalitarian mental midget statists it’s laughable. My favorite Seattle hypocrisy: Obama bumper sticker next to the popular ‘End This War!” sticker. Obama’s merely the current puppet, so I won’t spin a yarn here pointing out his allegiance to the Kleptocrats that run this country.