Hitchiker’s Guide greenlighted?
by Doc on Oct.05, 2003, under Movies
Could the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy finally get made? We’ve seen slow progress before. But CHUD is reporting that Spyglass/Disney has finally given the green light for production. No casting info but Jay Roach (Austin Powers) is still attached.
October 8th, 2003 on 2:49 pm
Just a disapointment waiting to happen? (Long-ish)
Surely if there’s one thing that a devoted fan of British SF has learned, through recent years, it’s that there is highly unlikely to ever be a decent film version of Hitchhiker, in much the same way that the proposed US versions of Red Dwarf will never work. I’m not about to generalize and say that “the Americans don’t get our humour”, because I have it on fairly good authority that many of them DO.
On the other hand, the ones who do are not the ones who have jobs as network TV execs, or movie bigwigs.
I mean, if you like Hitchhiker, you will surely have read Neil Gaiman’s excellent book “Mostly Harmless, but if you have not, it is the story of Douglas Adams, and his work.
It is quite graphically described how the American movie execs saw their film version of Hitchhiker coming out, ie lots of SFX and not much plot or humour, or other inconvenient things like that, and I see no reason to assume that things have changed since!
For these reasons, Douglas chose to not allow the movie to be made, and if he were alive now, I’m sure he’d make the same decision.
October 8th, 2003 on 7:29 pm
Re:Just a disapointment waiting to happen? (Long-i
OK, I’ll bite…
Neil Gaiman’s book “Mostly Harmless”? Do tell.
And Adams was _working_ on the movie when he died. So it seems he made a different decision…
October 9th, 2003 on 11:50 am
Re:Just a disapointment waiting to happen? (Long-i
Oh, I did not know that Adams had approved of it, so thanks for that. Gaiman’s book, the title of which I screwed up, is a great fun read. It’s a biography of Adams, but it’s more than that, it’s also a biography of the Hitchhiker series in all of it’s many and various forms
The actual title is “Don’t Panic” and I am quite embarrassed to have got that wrong. It is an extremely well researched book, and Gaiman is a great author, and is able to treat the subject with the humor that it deserves.
It’s not up-to-date of course, because I think that it was published before the novel Mostly Harmless (why did I swap those titles over? *LOL*) but it’s got so much info in it that you just would never find anywhere else, such as snippets from interviews the author has conducted with people who have been involved in the radio series and the TV series.
Did you already know that, and were you in fact just questioning my slip of the keyboard? 🙂
It’s definitely worth a read if you have not already read it!
October 9th, 2003 on 10:40 pm
Re:Just a disapointment waiting to happen? (Long-i
Actually, I wasn’t aware that Gaiman penned such a thing – and I found two thnigs on Amazon, Don’t Panic: The Official Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Companion (out of stock), and Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (available, but no description), both by Gaiman.
October 14th, 2003 on 2:30 pm
Re:Just a disapointment waiting to happen? (Long-i
It’s always hard to find the balance between giving information, and patronising a knowledgable man. And I’m just SO embarrassed that I got the name wrong first time.
The second listing is the name on the cover of my trusty, copy of the book, and I swear it will give you a laugh. There are bits in it which are so much fun and just deeply fascinating.
Of course, now DNA is sadly RIP, there may be a revised and updated version on the way… so be wary of purchasing in haste. 🙂