Hat tip to Peter Chattaway at FilmChat for the Variety scoop that C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters is heading for the bigscreen. Who’s doing it? No surprise there: Walden Media (lately of Narnia fame) is partnering with Ralph Winters Prods. with a goal for a 2008 release. Lewis’ stepson Douglas Gresham is one of the producers. Chattaway has some more background, asks some good questions and reflects some on the book. Take a look. Then head over to Jeffery Overstreet’s Looking Closer, where he begins his wishlist of actors and directors.I’ve added Seraphim Falls (a Western starring Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson) on my watch list after reading this ComingSoon interview with Neeson, who ruminates on one of the film’s themes, revenge and forgiveness. Westerns are a favorite on this blog because they often deal with themes that bring God-talk into open spaces—and this one, at least at first glance, has some promise.
Matt at BibleFilms Blog (who recently reviewed The Last King of Scotland at ReJesus) has started collecting reviews of The Ten—a film you may want to consider carefully before you see it. For more on that film, ComingSoon has an interview up with co-writer/director David Wain.
News on Myriam, Mother of Christ (a film which is slated to follow the events in Mary’s life leading up to, during and several years after Jesus’ birth) is showing up at BibleFilms, FilmChat and MonstersandCritics (which reports that Passion’s Benedict Fitzgerald may be writing the script).
And hat tip to Overstreet for his heads up on early reviews for film-this-blog’s-been-following Amazing Grace at Slant and Variety. Rotten Tomatoes also has one listed at Box Office.
IESB points to some pre-production storyboard and location images available for fantasy-film (and one to which this blog is looking forward) The Water Horse—another Walden big-screen adaptation of a children’s novel (this one about a boy’s discovery of a very unusual egg)—on director Jay Russell’s MySpace site. As noted before on this blog, fantasy films tend to carry themes that bring God-talk into open spaces.
Always on the lookout for projects that a-fav-director-of-this-blog M. Night Shyamalan is working on, I stumbled across the news that he’s reworking The Green Effect, a film about “a large-scale, cataclysmic environmental crisis that turns into a struggle by mankind to overcome nature.” Shyamalan is also attached to a live-action version of Avatar: The Last Airbender, a Nickelodeon cartoon series that my kids (and, yes, me) are hooked on. The series draws heavily on Eastern philosophy and religion, which on first glance might take it out of the God-talk realm. But I pay attention, and my kids and I find lots of opportunity in the storylines (some of which are very compelling for a cartoon) and character decisions to talk about what we believe and why we believe it.A couple of last tidbits: ComingSoon reports that Tobey McGuire has made a deal with Gerald Faller (who is selling his soul online at Winmysoul.com) to adapt his story for the big screen. Awhile back, Hemant Mehta did the same thing and Jim Henderson (who wrote Evangelism without Additives) “bought” Mehta’s soul—you can read the story here. And another man is expressing his soul: Modern-Noah’s-Ark-tale Evan Almighty director Tom Shadyac bought a church and is renovating it into a homeless shelter in an area he resided in during the filming of the Bruce Almighty sequel. According to ReadTheHook:
. . . . while Shadyac was living at the Omni Hotel during filming, he noticed the number of homeless people on the Downtown Mall. In fact, says [Jim] Barns, the director befriended several of them and was putting them up at the hotel. "He's a religious guy, but he doesn't wear it on his sleeve," says Barns. "Stories of his generosity while he was filming here are legendary."And there you have it—for now.
(Image: Screwtape Letters, Geoffrey Bles via Wikipedia; Avatar, Nickelodeon via Wikipedia)
