Atlas Shrugged Movie to Begin Filming!


Ed Hudgins

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Atlas Shrugged Movie to Begin Filming!

May 29, 2010

John Aglialoro has gone public with his latest project to film Atlas Shrugged: an independent production set to begin filming June 11. Aglialoro decided to go forward on his own after the latest venture with Lionsgate Studios collapsed early this year.

After 17 years of working with major studios, only to see projects peter out from studio delay, unworkable scripts, and balky stars, Aglialoro has taken the entrepreneurial helm. Working with screenwriter Brian Patrick O'Toole, he has completed a script covering the first part of Rand's novel (through the run of the John Galt Line and its aftermath).

Aglialoro expects the film to be released by the first quarter of 2011. He currently projects a three-movie sequence, following the structure of the novel. He has engaged Paul Johansson as director. Locations have been booked and casting is nearly complete.

"There's obviously a lot of risk in doing it this way," says Aglialoro, head of Cybex, the exercise-equipment company, and a trustee of The Atlas Society. "But taking risks for something you believe in—that's what Atlas is all about. The strength of the project is what it's always been: the power of Ayn Rand's novel."

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MSK already started a thread on this, it turned pretty gloomy right away. One of the linked articles said there’d be four films, here you’re saying three. David Kelley was said to be associated as a producer in an earlier incarnation, is he still involved?

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Part I: The Train Wreck

If it follows the book, the train wreck comes in part two.

Nearly everyone’s so down on this news, it’s Eeyore meets Marvin the Paranoid Android, may as well throw in A Bit of Fry and Laurie:

C'mon mates, stiff upper lip!

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I'm curious to know somethings you find positive about Objectivism, DF.

I don't see what that has to do with that film.

Nothing at all. I've made many negative remarks about Objectivism, but all your remarks seem to be negative no matter what the context. There has to be some significant positive value for you out of Objectivism and I don't know what it is. The basic, formal emphasis on rationality? I'd guess that that's it. Objectivism properly understood is completely congruent with science. Objectivism from Objectivists is a great big mishmash.

--Brant

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Brant: I'm curious to know somethings you find positive about Objectivism, DF.

DF: I don't see what that has to do with that film.

Brant: Nothing at all. I've made many negative remarks about Objectivism, but all your remarks seem to be negative no matter what the context. There has to be some significant positive value for you out of Objectivism and I don't know what it is.

It's a reasonable question, Dragonfly, not phrased as a hostile one, or a put down. (I also can't seem to recall at the moment any positive evaluations you've posted.) What do you agree with and/or what do like in the fiction?

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It's a reasonable question, Dragonfly, not phrased as a hostile one, or a put down. (I also can't seem to recall at the moment any positive evaluations you've posted.) What do you agree with and/or what do like in the fiction?

I've no time now for an extensive reply, but perhaps you can remember this post?

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DF on 17 December 2007 - 01:19 PM: I have also praised some aspects of Atlas Shrugged on OL. For example, from the very same thread: "I found the beginning of the novel masterful" and: "What I found fascinating was the writing technique, the fact that every word in every sentence was meaningful. At a first reading you only grasp a small part of that. Therefore it remains fascinating after more readings, as you discover more and more meaning in the words."

Yes you did say something positive! But it was nearly three years ago, so of course I'm not likely to remember that post.

Edited by Philip Coates
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I can't see how the fate of our civilization depends on whether Atlas Shrugged is ever made into a reasonably good quality movie—or TV series or holographic video or bande dessinée...

So I wish Mr. Aglialoro and crew the best. Maybe they'll succeed, maybe they won't.

In any event, there's no need for Eeyore emulations.

Robert Campbell

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I can't see how the fate of our civilization depends on whether Atlas Shrugged is ever made into a reasonably good quality movie — or TV series or holographic video or bande dessinée ...

Never saw a good French comic strip yet. ("Tintin," contrary to most casual assumptions, is from Belgium.)

The Fountainhead, though, was made into a remarkably adept daily-strip adaptation in the late '40s, under contract with the Hearst organization. A reprinting of this feature is the only item for which I could ever endure giving any money to the ARI. ($25, and even that was earmarked for Jeff Britting's semi-sane work at the Rand Archives.)

As for Atlas, my film hopes have been strung along ever since first reading it, on around the 20th anniversary of its release, back in 1977. I decline to let this latest news interest me. When I've actually bought a ticket and am sitting in a theater seeing it, I'll believe it, and not before then.

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> Never saw a good French comic strip yet. ("Tintin," contrary to most casual assumptions, is from Belgium.)

Tintin is more than a "comic strip".

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Never saw a good French comic strip yet. ("Tintin," contrary to most casual assumptions, is from Belgium.) [...]

Tintin is more than a "comic strip".

Well, yes, of course, it's sequential art, which is the proper broader term, and has been published in books that are far afield from (or end up collecting) newspaper appearances. It's also illustrated prose.

Yet Robert was colloquially using the French version (which I was translating) of the more general "comic strip" term. As is done by many professionals in comic-book publishing, who constantly refer to individual monthly titles as "strips."

I keep thinking that Atlas would work well as a graphic novel, that being the preferred term nowadays for book-length sequential art. L. Neil Smith's libertarian SF tale The Probability Broach adapted quite well to this medium. (You can read it for free here.)

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I'm curious to know somethings you find positive about Objectivism, DF.

I don't see what that has to do with that film.

Nothing at all. I've made many negative remarks about Objectivism, but all your remarks seem to be negative no matter what the context. There has to be some significant positive value for you out of Objectivism and I don't know what it is. The basic, formal emphasis on rationality? I'd guess that that's it. Objectivism properly understood is completely congruent with science. Objectivism from Objectivists is a great big mishmash.

--Brant

Objectivism's premise that one can derive an "Ought" from an "Is" in nature is not congruent with science.

The same goes for the 'tabula rasa' premise.

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Aglialoro expects the film to be released by the first quarter of 2011. He currently projects a three-movie sequence, following the structure of the novel. He has engaged Paul Johansson as director. Locations have been booked and casting is nearly complete.

If the casting is nearly complete, how come we don't know who they are yet?

Why wouldn't they want everyone to know that Pam Anderson has agreed to play Dagny, but only if 'The Rock' plays Rearden??

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I'm curious to know somethings you find positive about Objectivism, DF.

I don't see what that has to do with that film.

Nothing at all. I've made many negative remarks about Objectivism, but all your remarks seem to be negative no matter what the context. There has to be some significant positive value for you out of Objectivism and I don't know what it is. The basic, formal emphasis on rationality? I'd guess that that's it. Objectivism properly understood is completely congruent with science. Objectivism from Objectivists is a great big mishmash.

--Brant

Objectivism's premise that one can derive an "Ought" from an "Is" in nature is not congruent with science.

The same goes for the 'tabula rasa' premise.

Now, now: tabula rasa is not a premise of Objectivism, but it is a mistake by AR. The real premises of Objectivism are reality and reason. That's all. As for ought from is if it doesn't come from an is all oughts are invalid. If a man is hungry he ought to eat--something. He doesn't have to, of course. Here is the difference between ought and must. We aren't discussing the is-must problem, whatever that is. Must has the intimation of compulsion, ought of suggestion, of options. Maybe that's the source of this point of contention. Is has no options. Is is is. Period. Science is concerned with is, or it's not science. If someone wants to be a scientist he ought to know this.

--Brant

not rocket science

Edited by Brant Gaede
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  • 3 months later...

Robert Campbell wrote:

So I wish Mr. Aglialoro and crew the best. Maybe they'll succeed, maybe they won't. In any event, there's no need for Eeyore emulations.

end quote

Optimism IS preferred.

Here is a good opening for the movie, “Atlas Shrugged.”

The screen is blank. We hear a lamp turning on, and suddenly there is light. Standing in front of us, with those brilliantly penetrating, and cock-sure eyes, is Ayn Rand (played by actress Helen Mirren.)

What would Ayn say to us before the movie begins? Does anyone care to write some dialogue? What would Ayn say for a prologue, if she were alive and sprightly in 2010?

Semper cogitans fidele,

Peter Taylor

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  • 3 weeks later...

"...an independent production"

That's oppossed to a production put out by the American government?

Oh well, as long as it remains faithfull to the book...who cares about how well directed, acted, written or how good the music, photography etc. is.

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I will lay a bet that there will be gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over the film version of -AS-. There is no way a movie can do justice to the novel.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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"...an independent production"

That's oppossed to a production put out by the American government?

Yes, an "independent film" is one that has been produced by someone other than the American government. Independent films these days are usually ones that are produced instead by the government of Indonesia, which is where the nickname "Indie" comes from. When you hear the term "Indie film," you should think "Bollywood," which is a play on words: it combines "Bali" and "Hollywood," since Bali is the creative center of the "Indie" film world.

J

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"...an independent production"

That's oppossed to a production put out by the American government?

Oh well, as long as it remains faithfull to the book...who cares about how well directed, acted, written or how good the music, photography etc. is.

I can do this novel, video or film, for a pittance. It will be faithful to the novel--and complete garbage.

Justice to the novel means a lot of different things. It doesn't mean being as great a film as it is a novel. The film We the Living did justice to the novel. It wasn't even a great film. For instance, the ending was very badly done on a cheap set. They obviously had no choice considering time, money and circumstances. Of Rand's three novels, only WTL could have been made into a film greater than the novel--in the 1930s, not today. This is for the same reason that Citizen Kane was a great movie, way back when, but could not be made into a great movie today. WTL was not a great novel, it was a great first novel by a great novelist. A great job.

AS needs a budget of at least 100 million and made in three parts. As a movie the visuals have to be celebrated; visuals are a movie's strength. Talking heads are the primary strength of a novel. It works because Rand wrote her dynamic visuals superlatively. In the novel they were more than lagniappe, but not primary. I'm against the idea of it being a TV series. I'd want to see it on the big screen.

Yes AS can be made into a great movie. It will not be as great as the novel nor as great as it could have been if it had been made not later than the early 1970s. If I were a genius filmmaker, though, I would not do it, not for love and not for money. I couldn't stand the casting. These AS characters exist so strongly in my mind there's no way I could find real-life actor analogues. There would be other problems I'd rather not deal with.

--Brant

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Brant:

Excellent points.

The sweep of the scenes in Atlas would require a director with a significant panoramic vision, and, at the same time, the ability to bring that vision intimately down to the personal scale of the intensely subtle emotional exchanges between the "bigger than life" hero/heroine characters.

As you noted, this is a different medium which is not always translatable. Print is a "hot" medium, almost like radio, since it fills one sense and involves the "image" "ination" to complete the mental picture.

The movie screen is also a somewhat hot medium in that the senses that are employed are focused by the darkness of the theater and the transmission of the images to the eye.

Whereas television is, as McLuhan noted, a "cool" medium, in that it engages a combination of the senses and forces the completion of the rapid sequencing of dots on the TV screen. One of the reasons why TV seems "tactile" is the manner in which the image is sent. Additionally, there is a "narcotizing" effect of TV which does not mesh well with the themes in Atlas.

Finally, how many great novels have been made into great movies?

I would venture that the percentage is very low.

Adam

Edited by Selene
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Brant wrote:

Yes AS can be made into a great movie. It will not be as great as the novel nor as great as it could have been if it had been made not later than the early 1970s.

end quote

That’s rather startling but well said Brant. I had never thought of a deadline for a great film. When I read Atlas Shrugged around 45 years ago, the railroads were still around but a bit of a curiosity, yet the setting still resonated due to a lot of WWII movies depicting railroads. The dusty farms and gutted cities and factories always seemed like the 1930’s and The Great Depression to me

Even then, I remember speculation about placing the novel, in the future with bullet trains, or even changing the mode of transportation to the airlines.

Galt’s motor and the scientifically hidden “gulch” are still believable.

Casting would be difficult. Harrison Ford as Hank Rearden with Barbara Branden as Lillian Rearden seem like good casting. I still like Jodie Foster as the main character of the novel, Dagny Taggart.

I’ve got my Orville Redenbacher movie popcorn ready for the microwave when the new movie makes it to Netflix, although if the reviews are good I may get to the theatre.

Semper cogitans fidele,

Peter Taylor

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