You may remember that there was supposed to be a remake of this movie, to be released this year, but it hasn’t happened so far. And I’m guessing that it won’t, or else I’d be hearing the pre-release hype by now. This is disappointing as I was rather looking forward to it, and was wondering how this new version would vary from Francois Truffaut’s somewhat dreamlike interpretation in the 1960’s.
Not really, as it doesn’t provide any information beyond what the OP already knows.
There hasn’t been a peep about this project for about a year, has there? It doesn’t sound like it’s being developed at all.
Earlier this year, Darabont said that it’s likely that the next movie he fields will be an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Mist, so it’s possible that the Fahrenheit 451 project has simply stalled before it really got anywhere.
I’m pretty jazzed about the possibility of a modern adaptation, but I’ve learned not to get too worked up about a movie until it gets quite a bit further along in development. (I’ve been obsessing about A Scanner Darkly for ten years, now, and seen it get handed off through three directors and as many screenwriters. Now that it’s in post-production I’m fairly confident we’ll get to see it soon.) I can’t remember how many films I’ve been excited about that just ended up petering out.
I distinctly remember that my copy of Frank Herbert’s Dune, purchased in the early 1970s, actually proclaimed that it was “soon to be a major motion picture!”, but it took more than ten years for that to happen.
Yeah-- originally, Alejandro Jodorowsky was supposed to write and direct it, Salvador Dali was cast as the Emperor, fantastic artists were onboard to do the design for each House (H.R. Geiger for the Harkonnen, Moebius for Atreides, etc) and Pink Floyd was set to do the soundtrack.
Somehow, the project ended up going over budget, and David Lynch grudgingly agreed to take the helm in exchange for a deal to make Blue Velvet as his next picture.
I’m a big Lynch fan, but I really wish that the Jodorowsky version made it to the screen. I’m sure that Frank Herbert fans would have hated it even more than the Lynch version, though – it would have inevitably been full of Jodorowsky’s signature alchemical, kabbalist, and hermetic imagery, with plenty of over-the-top surrealism.
I know I would have hated it – I’ve seen his concept sketches. Giger’s sandworms looked like the tongues of his Alien. the Harkonnen house looked like a bloated woman. Jodorowski was going to introduce a subplot where Jessica and Paul were having an incestuous affair. Good Lord, if you’re going to change things that much, why bother buying the rights to the book at all?
I just checked out Coming Attractions and it seems that there has been no real movement on getting F451 made. It seems that Mel Gibson has/had the rights to it and had wanted to direct it. He lost interest and Frank Darabont expressed interest. However, it seems that nothing has happened since 2002. I wouldn’t hold my breath on this getting made any time soon.