Got an air sickness bag handy? You may need one when you learn the details of who’s behind a film adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 that may be coming soon to a theater near you:
George Orwell’s seminal literary work 1984 could be getting a new movie adaptation.
Imagine Entertainment, the production house run by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, and LBI Entertainment, the banner run by Julie Yorn, are teaming up to develop a new take on the 20th century classic.
Shepard Fairey, the street artist perhaps best known for creating the Barack Obama “Hope” poster, was instrumental in bringing the project to Imagine and LBI and might take some sort of producer role once the deals shake out.
Imagine and Fairey were pursuing Orwell’s estate for the rights to 1984 and discovered that Yorn was simultaneously pursuing the rights. The two companies then decided to pair up.
That’s right: we may soon see in screens big and small a movie that could very well be advertised as “From the Dishonest Propagandist Who Brought You the Obama ‘Hope’ Poster.”
There’s something very fitting about a dishonest propagandist pushing for a whole new 1984 movie, but coming from Obama booster Ron Howard and Shepard Fairey, this project might amount to – if it’s ever produced – a version of 1984 that would make George Orwell spin in his grave.
Who knows? Maybe Orwell, forward-thinking as he was, would do no more than shrug and say “They’re Obama supporters. What did you expect?“
I assume in the remake, Farley, Grazer and Howard will tweak the story ever so slightly so that the audience will be steered towards rooting for Big Brother.
“1. John
I assume in the remake, Farley, Grazer and Howard will tweak the story ever so slightly so that the audience will be steered towards rooting for Big Brother.”
Nope. No need, because Big Brother will be a right wing dictator, and Oceania will be a theocracy.
0_0……..>_<……. blurgle….. yort…… glak!!11!!……..
This oughtta be good. If anything, it feeds into my theory that the liberal mindset is like the mindset of a bad writer; all black and white, no subtlety, no ability to ascribe any motivations to their opponents besides “because they’re evil.” And, like a bad writer, they’ll inevitably find that–to their astonishment–people will be rooting for their villains instead of their heroes. I can’t wait to bootleg this film and cheer for Big Brother and the other forces of sanity!
It doesn’t matter: by the time this actually gets into theaters (if it does) Obama will be long gone.
Coming later this fall to a screen near you: “1984 — The How-To Manual”.
V for Vendetta II: 1984
I guess the leftist shills see how close to the world of Oceania in 1984 Dear Leader is bringing us, so they feel the need to distort and spin the novel to a mass audience of movie goers who will never read the book.
Yeah, that’s about what I said , too.
I imagine the movie will involve Winston’s heroic fight to bring contraception to the Junior Anti-Sex League under the right wing theocratic boot of Big Brother.
These are great times for those who enjoy irony.
This will be the most meta version of 1984 ever! Either so serious it will be hilarious or so airburshed it will be awful.
Whew! For some reason, I thought you were about to announce a “Last Tango in Paris” remake starring Alec Baldwin & Kathy Griffin. I actually feel better now.
How will they get around Oceania being a socialist state? Or will the flick be nothing but double plus ungood prolefeed?
My guess is that Big Brother will be portrayed as a Fascist Right Winger (TM) and Winston will be the brave socialist trying to being equality to the Downtrodden Workers, or some such drivel.
Won’t the Newspeak necessary for to make this movie be out of this world? How else are such big Obama boosters going to make this movie without exposing their beloved New Messiah to scorn? They’ll have to Newspeak the whole freaking storyline until Big Brother becomes the protagonist, the Ministry of Truth actually tells the truth, the Ministry of Love actually encourages love, thoughtcriminals are actually criminal, and Room 101 is the happiest place on earth. My brain is already aching just from the thought of the mental gymnastics involved.
It will be one long, agonizing exercise in reverse doublethink.
The fools who are pursuing this project obviously do not know who George Orwell was, nor did they ever read anything else about him. Probably based their decision solely on a 60 second Superbowl Ad that someone told them was based on an idea from 1984. No need really to inquire further.
1984: The Ministry of Truth’s Side of the Story
I am from the very area in Boston that Fairey “tagged.” I’d truly like to meet the guy.
I’ve never pissed on someone’s leg before, but there’s always a first time…
Unless Ron Howard can get Zombie Richard Burton to reprise his role as “O’Brien,” Little Ronny had better stick to his “Backdraft: Mayberry Up in Smoke” sequel.
Still more evidence, as if we needed it, that Hollywood has run out of original ideas.
The Richard Burton version was superb, and very faithful to the book. (Julia was exactly like I pictured her when I read it way back when.) How do they think they can improve on that?
I know: They could tell the story from Big Brother’s perspective.
/sarc off
Hollywood is terribly, horribly, fatally, to the Left. These are the people who believe that since they attended Columbia in 1968, they’re more competent than the Founding Fathers. Filing the serial numbers off of a “Classic” movie. and poorly re-doing, therefore, it is no stretch of the imagination. They actually believe they’re that good, and can “Re-imagine” the film better than the original.
Having read the book I would almost like to see it. I realize how many people haven’t read it and it seems ripe for butchering. Ultimately I have faith that Orwell’s estate shuts the door in their faces.
The version with John Hurt as Winston wasn’t half bad, but this will be a hatchet job.
Dude. Orwell was a socialist and fought for the Party of Marxist Unification during the Spanish Civil War. He also worked as a propagandist for the BBC during World War II.
He was way more radical and to the left than Shepard Fairey is.
Nah, Orwell eventually soured on leftism and it’s hypocrisy. See Christopher Hitchen’s literary criticism of Orwell and whether he’s a leftist hero, or conservative, anti-centralized command-and-control authoritarianism: “Why Orwell Matters.”
1984, Animal Farm, and Brave New World, according to the incomparable Mr. Hitchens. It’s indispensable.
This piece takes no position on the “radicalism” of Shepard Fairey, namely because I do not believe he is a radical. If you concluded that I accused him of being a radical from reading this piece, you did not read it closely. Useful idiot is more like it.
Orwell was a socialist – and he may have been a propagandist. But if he didn’t believe in the tyrannical streak of socialism and so many of its advocates, he wouldn’t have written Animal Farm or 1984. As for fighting in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side (just like Ernest Hemingway did), that was over 10 years before 1984.
They already ruined Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Some Hollywood assholes turned it from a lesson on freedom and responsible into fascists in space (who can’t fight in the least).