Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Hollywood - Where Originality Goes to Die

The cover story in the Life section of today's USA Today is devoted to Neil Gaiman, who is set to have a big year on the big screen. A film version of his book Stardust comes out later this summer, with a Gaiman-penned version of Beowulf directed by Robert Zemeckis coming later in the year. The article discusses Gaiman's fairly newfound involvement with Hollywood, which has only recently become equipped to bring his fantastic imagery to life. It's not always gone smoothly:

Gaiman had offers to make a film out of his 2005 best seller Anansi Boys, about the sons of an African god discovering their magical background while living in the corrupt modern world, but moviemakers wanted to change the lead black characters to white or drop the magical elements altogether.
That seems quite pointless to me, like making a version of 1984 where Big Brother is a helpful sidekick during Winston's wacky adventures!

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