Lucille
11-02-2015, 06:00 PM
This is how it should have been done in the first place! Those movies were a huge mistake.
I just hope he doesn't "reimagine" her ideas too much. I also hope Jolie isn't cast as Taggart! I can't stand that weirdo.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/business/media/producer-of-the-godfather-lands-rights-to-atlas-shrugged-novel.html
LOS ANGELES — It took a while — more than 40 years, actually.
But Albert S. Ruddy, a movie and television producer who does not like to quit, has landed rights to make his passion project: a screen version of “Atlas Shrugged,” Ayn Rand’s Objectivist bible.
Mr. Ruddy, whose canon includes films as varied as “The Godfather” and “The Cannonball Run,” almost had a deal back in the early 1970s, when he wooed Ms. Rand personally while sitting on a small couch in New York.
But Ms. Rand, who had left the Soviet Union in the 1920s and feared the Russians might acquire Paramount Pictures to subvert the project, wanted script approval; Mr. Ruddy, as adamant as she was, declined. “Then I’ll put in my will, the one person who can’t get it is you,” Mr. Ruddy recalls being told by Ms. Rand, who died in 1982.
Eventually, the rights were acquired by John Aglialoro, an investor and devotee of Ms. Rand’s philosophy, which celebrates capitalism and rational self-interest. Mr. Aglialoro became a producer of three independent films based on the nearly 1,200-page novel, beginning with “Atlas Shrugged: Part I,” released in 2011.
At the box office, however, the pictures made barely a blip. “You shot the book, not the movie,” Mr. Ruddy remembers telling Mr. Aglialoro, in explaining why he should let Mr. Ruddy try again.
In the last few months, Mr. Ruddy said, Mr. Aglialoro agreed, clearing the way for what Mr. Ruddy now expects to become a six- or eight-hour television version of the novel — ideally, for a world-ranging Netflix-type streaming service.
Mr. Ruddy, who is working up an outline for a writer or writers yet to be named, sees his rendition as a love story, built squarely around its commanding female protagonist, Dagny Taggart. (Angelina Jolie was in line for an earlier, never-made version.)
The main thing, Mr. Ruddy said, is to honor Ms. Rand’s insistence on making a film for the future. That means redrawing its capitalists and creators, who go on strike against creeping collectivism, as figures more familiar than the railroad heiress and industrial titans who figured in a book that was first published in 1957.
“When you look at guys like Jeff Bezos, he’s not only doing Amazon, he wants to colonize Mars,” Mr. Ruddy said. He spoke by telephone last week of his plan for a mini-series in which an Internet blackout led by Bezos-like figures might shut down cellphones, banks and almost everything else.
As for concerns about faithful Rand fans objecting to any liberties he might take with the book, Mr. Ruddy said he had none.
“If you can reimagine the Old Testament and the New Testament,” he said, “why can’t I reimagine Ayn Rand?”
I just hope he doesn't "reimagine" her ideas too much. I also hope Jolie isn't cast as Taggart! I can't stand that weirdo.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/business/media/producer-of-the-godfather-lands-rights-to-atlas-shrugged-novel.html
LOS ANGELES — It took a while — more than 40 years, actually.
But Albert S. Ruddy, a movie and television producer who does not like to quit, has landed rights to make his passion project: a screen version of “Atlas Shrugged,” Ayn Rand’s Objectivist bible.
Mr. Ruddy, whose canon includes films as varied as “The Godfather” and “The Cannonball Run,” almost had a deal back in the early 1970s, when he wooed Ms. Rand personally while sitting on a small couch in New York.
But Ms. Rand, who had left the Soviet Union in the 1920s and feared the Russians might acquire Paramount Pictures to subvert the project, wanted script approval; Mr. Ruddy, as adamant as she was, declined. “Then I’ll put in my will, the one person who can’t get it is you,” Mr. Ruddy recalls being told by Ms. Rand, who died in 1982.
Eventually, the rights were acquired by John Aglialoro, an investor and devotee of Ms. Rand’s philosophy, which celebrates capitalism and rational self-interest. Mr. Aglialoro became a producer of three independent films based on the nearly 1,200-page novel, beginning with “Atlas Shrugged: Part I,” released in 2011.
At the box office, however, the pictures made barely a blip. “You shot the book, not the movie,” Mr. Ruddy remembers telling Mr. Aglialoro, in explaining why he should let Mr. Ruddy try again.
In the last few months, Mr. Ruddy said, Mr. Aglialoro agreed, clearing the way for what Mr. Ruddy now expects to become a six- or eight-hour television version of the novel — ideally, for a world-ranging Netflix-type streaming service.
Mr. Ruddy, who is working up an outline for a writer or writers yet to be named, sees his rendition as a love story, built squarely around its commanding female protagonist, Dagny Taggart. (Angelina Jolie was in line for an earlier, never-made version.)
The main thing, Mr. Ruddy said, is to honor Ms. Rand’s insistence on making a film for the future. That means redrawing its capitalists and creators, who go on strike against creeping collectivism, as figures more familiar than the railroad heiress and industrial titans who figured in a book that was first published in 1957.
“When you look at guys like Jeff Bezos, he’s not only doing Amazon, he wants to colonize Mars,” Mr. Ruddy said. He spoke by telephone last week of his plan for a mini-series in which an Internet blackout led by Bezos-like figures might shut down cellphones, banks and almost everything else.
As for concerns about faithful Rand fans objecting to any liberties he might take with the book, Mr. Ruddy said he had none.
“If you can reimagine the Old Testament and the New Testament,” he said, “why can’t I reimagine Ayn Rand?”