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"Atlas Shrugged" Movie

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Atlas Shrugged has been delayed

In an interview with Angelina Jolie:

She had a little more to say about the adaptation of Atlas Shrugged, which is moving forward very slowly, despite having the Plan B powerhouse of Pitt and Jolie behind it. Angelina told me that the project is still on the table, but "the thing with Atlas is just, we all feel that it's one of those projects where if you can't do it right, you really can't touch it. So we have not had all the pieces come together. There's not been a director that's right to come on, or all of those elements. So until it does, you know, I certainly don't want to be a part of something that's just put together to hit 'this date.'"

http://idiie.cinematical.com/2007/06/17/an...gged-is-stalle/

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I am pretty sure the term "international terrorism" is used for two reasons:

1) It most likely refers to the actions of Fransisco and Ragnar, who are seen as villanous for the first part of Atlas Shrugged. Therefore, the negative connotation of "international terrorism" fits, especially because pirates are viewed with a more possitive light these days.

2) The term "international terrorism" is sensational and relevant to modern society. "International terrorism" is probably just used to help the movie's publicity.

By the way, I really hope they do not add a new plotline about Muslim extremists. Atlas is deep enough as it is.

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Damn, I'm getting impatient. I'm so excited to see the final product.

Get in line, girlfriend. Some of us have been impatient to see this thing happen for a decade or more. :P

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I would like to say that I'm excited too, but I cannot help but be skeptical that Hollywood could possibly produce a film that goes against everything they preach.

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Hollywood "preaches"/supports what sells, and the truth sells IF done right. Mrs. Jolie is correct that the right pieces and people have to fall into place for the film to be done right. It's been done before with great films. But nothing "falls" into place, the right people have to be found. Contact was a compromise, and it has paid the price. I think many sense that same betrayal where a good movie can be made, but lacks the commitment to integrity this storyline demands.

International terrorism as a term to express Ragnar's behavior is demanded, BUT how to differentiate it from radical muslims that wish to tear down western culture is the key. He seeks to embrace western culture, it's roots, it's classical and historical foundings. And he wishes only to fight those corrupt corporations that betray capitalism by using the US and other western governments to maintain and support dictatorship style socialist themed countries which pool their starving citizens into jobs they need to live.

Issues of where to stand on the war in Iraq, "war on terror", how it should be implimented and whether it's really about setting the justified stage for freedom there become things required to be settled now before the movie is made. I can see many people's dire need to wait and see the result of this war, so that they aren't half way through filming with a future which predicted it wrong.

Showing how the supporting and training of horrific gov'ts to keep the USSR from influencing and overwhelming them, needs to be exposed. And how it naturally backfires into the current crisis we have now with those same monsters we have created. Creating/supporting a nationalistic religously zealous enemy to our ememy, does not strengthen freedom but can only do exactly that... create and support an enemy.

All that aside, Ragnar's actions were considered impatient, while others only wished to pull out and drop from the radar, not fight. The MAIN point of socialism creeping into every gov't and taking over needs to be stressed. But as an ever increasing number of the population think "universal healthcare" is the moral path to follow it becomes VERY important to show many medical advances will be and have been stopped. An Ellis Wyatt of the medical field I think would be very helpful... showing how someone like him is held back in the name of greater good of the health of the many.

Ok, that's enough from me for the moment.

Mrs. Jolie, it can be done...

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  • 2 months later...

Randall Wallace, screenwriter for Atlas Shrugged, is featured in the May/June issue of Script Magazine.

I purchased a copy to read what his intentions are for the film and find out a little about him. He's clearly and altruistic Christian who claims he can put his core beliefs aside and tell the story from an Objectivists point of view, which gives me little hope.

What I found, in the article, to be the most interesting is the fact that his son attends Duke University and he convinced Randall to attend a lecture on the abolition of Anti-Trust (We know who teaches there and gave that lecture). Also, Randall first read Atlas after making a deal with his son that he’d read Atlas if his son would read some C.S. Lewis.

Link to Scriptmag website: http://www.scriptmag.com/magazine/issues/bi_mayjun07.php

Edited by NorseGod
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Hollywood "preaches"/supports what sells

Actually, no, they don't. I highly suspect that's why box office receipts have been on the decline in recent years.

I know they can make a good movie, but I have doubts that they will. I certainly hope they prove me wrong.

Edited by K-Mac
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Actually, no, they don't. I highly suspect that's why box office receipts have been on the decline in recent years.

I know they can make a good movie, but I have doubts that they will. I certainly hope they prove me wrong.

It could also be more home theater.

But I suspect you are right--when it seems all they can do is rehash TV shows from the 60s, make a movie from a comic book character, or revive a series of movies that ended 10-20 years ago, that means they are out of ideas.

I remember when LOTR was coming out, Hollywood was throwing big-name stars at us in really bad movies and wondering why people weren't going to see them. They could not (or would not) understand that celebrity actors were neither necessary nor sufficient to a movie's being succesful. ("Oh, here's this crappy PoMo story but let's have Bruce Willis [and/or Sandra Bullock] take the lead and no one will care." is the thought bubble I was imagining.)

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Actually, no, they don't. I highly suspect that's why box office receipts have been on the decline in recent years.

I know they can make a good movie, but I have doubts that they will. I certainly hope they prove me wrong.

They do actually, just not necessarily at the box office. Remember the movie, preceded by hype on the tv networks and websites or in newspapers and magazines owned by the same company is followed by rental receipts, dvd sales, children's toy sales, labeled cups at burger king and cereal boxes. Plenty of money can be made on so so movies.http://forum.ObjectivismOnline.com/index.php?showtopic=555&st=260&gopid=155820&#

By way of example, Viacom The owner of Paramount, dreamworks, mtv movies, nickelodeon movies, etc. also owns bet, comedy central, mtv, spike tv, vh1, and dozens of other subsidiaries.

For a complete list http://www.viacom.com/OUR%20BRANDS/BRAND%2...EX/default.aspx

Their marketing teams think very broadly. With the kind of advertising strength and varying income streams they can bring to bare, success in the box office becomes a somewhat minor issue.

edit for spelling

Edited by aequalsa
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They do actually, just not necessarily at the box office. Remember the movie, preceded by hype on the tv networks and websites or in newspapers and magazines owned by the same company is followed by rental receipts, dvd sales, children's toy sales, labeled cups at burger king and cereal boxes. Plenty of money can be made on so so movies.

I somehow doubt that Atlas Shrugged could be developed into a Happy Meal toy, and if so, then Hollywood is worse than I thought. ;)

I don't doubt that plenty of money is made on movies, but Hollywood and music producers have been crying about how CD sales and movie ticket sales are down and insist on blaming the internet and everyone else for their woes when we all know it's because they're, for the most part, producing junk that is out of touch w/ the average American's values.

I certainly hope that a bunch of Hollywood liberals can do AS justice and I know they can, I just doubt they will.

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Did you mean "subsidiaries?" ;)
oops :) yes
I somehow doubt that Atlas Shrugged could be developed into a Happy Meal toy, and if so, then Hollywood is worse than I thought. :lol:
I don't know...I'd buy a Ragnar action figure. :)

edit:for spelling again...one of those days.

Edited by aequalsa
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I would be disappointed to see Jolie cast in this movie. She claims to be an admirer of Rand, but her politics are about as anti-Objectivist as they come. I would much rather see the role played by a non-Objectivist who knows she doesn't understand Objectivism, than by Jolie or anyone else who who claims to personally embody these priniciples but really has no clue.

Edited by Tabitha
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Update! It's off again!

UpUpdate! BACK ON!

Unfortunately, that's been the history of the Atlas Shrugged movie project. I remember it being in a similar state as it is today (a few names named -- director, or script-writer, or actor) sometime in the early 1990's. Edited by softwareNerd
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With Hollywood's obsession with bankable trilogies I don't know why they don't make this one. The novel comes in three parts so right away, the story is trilogy-ready.

That's probably the only way someone could do the story justice--as a miniseries or a trilogy of movies. It *might* be doable as 3 90 minute movies--I don't think they'd have to be terribly long.

As for what *will* happen once that bunch of leftists gets hold of it.... I'm not optimistic at all. I think it will be the worst hack job ever, and yes I do remember what they did to Starship Troopers.

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That's probably the only way someone could do the story justice--as a miniseries or a trilogy of movies. It *might* be doable as 3 90 minute movies--I don't think they'd have to be terribly long.

As for what *will* happen once that bunch of leftists gets hold of it.... I'm not optimistic at all. I think it will be the worst hack job ever, and yes I do remember what they did to Starship Troopers.

Look at what happened with Lord of the Rings. They made a Franken-Movie out of it.

Bob Kolker

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Here is the Money Speech in a length fit to a film:

"So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value.

Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he’s evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he’s evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent.

Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out.”

That is very well done.

Bob Kolker

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Look at what happened with Lord of the Rings. They made a Franken-Movie out of it.

Bob Kolker

If the Atlas Shrugged movie is as well done as Lord of the Rings I don't know that we could ask for more. I thought it was one of the best adaptations from a novel to screen ever accomplished.

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