Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code" sequel earns Goldman highest screenplay paycheck ever
Nikke Finke at Deadline: Hollywood reports,
I'm told that Akiva Goldsman, who adapted Dan Brown's worldwide bestseller into a $755.6 mil hit pic, is receiving $4 million for the Da Vinci Code sequel in the works by both Imagine Entertainment and Sony Pictures.
Meanwhile, the Da Vinci Code pre-quel, Angels and Demons, is coming to the big screen.
Finke says:
In A&D, Goldsman must make sense of a plot crammed with Vatican intrigue and high-tech drama: it thrusts Langdon together with an ancient and shadowy secret brotherhood, the Illuminati, the most powerful underground organization ever to walk the earth. Their enemy is the Catholic Church and they're detemined to carry out the final phase of a legendary vendetta against it.
Yes!! Alright! Time for Christians to re-start that media machine that declares, "Christians should engage in The Da Vinci Dialogue! Christians should buy tickets for the whole congregation, thus paying Sony 'thank-you' money for making entertainment that serves up lame-brained attacks on the church!"
I'm kidding, of course. I think it was one of the most embarrassing moments in Christian engagement with art and entertainment, the way we ran headline after headline, story after story, encouraging Christians to seize this opportunity to enrich a cultural dialogue.
I'm all for vigorous dialogue about art, but why spend so many resources encouraging people to spend their money on THIS movie? This movie is hot air and empty glamour. This movie is a mistake. This movie doesn't offer us much fodder for worthwhile discussion. It's bland, forgettable Hollywood entertainment. Instead, we could be focusing our time and attention on rich, meaningful art!
Why didn't we bother to invite our neighbors to see and discuss Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, which is a much better movie, with an Oscar-worthy lead performance, and all kinds of great storytelling about faith, history, power, and truth-telling?
And what ever came of all of those aggressive "Christians should see The Da Vinci Code and discuss it with their neighbors!" campaigns? Do we have any stories yet of a wave of people turning to Christ? Did it bring about anything lasting and life-changing? Or did we just pat ourselves on the back for having "engaged the culture"?
What did I hear from those moviegoers who actually gave Sony ten bucks for the privilege? Believer and unbeliever alike responded, "Man oh man, that was a long, boring movie!"
How bad was the movie? It was so bad that advertisements for the DVD try to win back people's interest with a bunch of hooey about how there are "secret symbols hidden in the movie that you didn't see the first time! Find the symbols and solve the code!" Good grief. Suddenly, big screen movies are stooping to the tactics of cereal-box gimmickry.
Robert Altman, Remembered by Friends and Colleagues
A few words about Robert Altman from his friends and colleagues...Read more
Opus on "Ikiru"
I was going to just surrender blogging for the rest of the day, due to the loss of Altman, but then I discovered that Opus, one of my daily blog stops, has just published a review of Kurosawa's Ikiru, another one of my favorites, and a film that I've given a lot of attention in Through a Screen Darkly.
Check out Opus's insightful overview of this classic.
Rest in Peace, Robert Altman
This is a devastating day for anyone who loves great moviemaking.Read more
UPDATED: Jeffrey Wells on New Line's decision against Peter Jackson
Wells has a forceful opinion of the fate of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit. (Earlier story here, and further thoughts here.) In short, he thinks New Line has done the right thing, and he's glad that Jackson's out.Read more
My Conversation(s) with Darren Aronofsky ("The Fountain," "Requiem for a Dream")
Earlier this month, I had a long conversation with director Darren Aronofsky, the man responsible for this year's most ambitious sci-fi film The Fountain, and who has also given us Requiem for a Dream and Pi.
We talked by telephone about The Fountain, and about how it begs to be interpreted in so many different ways. We talked about the power of myth, the idea that the world's religions can be traced to common origins, and humankind's constant struggle to solve the problem of mortality through scientific endeavor.
When Aronofsky stopped in Seattle to do a Q&A with an audience at an advance screening of The Fountain, I met with him the next morning for half an hour.
As I sat down with him, he held up his cell phone to show me a photo of tiny, tiny infant.
"One day old," he said proudly.
I sat down, wide-eyed and confounded. "One day old?! And you're here? In Seattle?"
"One day old."
My head was spinning. "So... that must be tricky. You must be feeling a little stressed out!"
"What do you mean?" he asked. "Are you talking about the screening last night?"
"Well, yeah... that means you must have been a little distracted during the screening."
"No, actually. It was a great audience, and they had good questions."
"Yes, but, I mean... were you on the phone all night with Rachel? How are the mother and baby?"
"Oh, well, they're fine. He'll was five months old at Halloween."
Blink.
Blink.
"But you said... I thought... I thought you said he was one day old."
"Oh, no, no, no, no, no... the PICTURE was taken when he was one day old."
And that's how our second conversation began.
Today, you can read excerpts from my two conversations with Aronofsky at Christianity Today Movies.
An Appeal to MGM: Get Alfonzo Cuaron to Direct "The Hobbit"
Since Peter Jackson has just made it offical... he's not going to direct The Hobbit... the biggest guaranteed blockbuster on the "Coming Soon" list is now in need of a director.
MGM is probably going to have directors lined up begging for the job.
And I know who they should hire.
Consider this record:
- The timeless, beautiful children's film A Little Princess
- Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, the best of the Potter film franchise so far
- a standard-setting, earth-shaking science-fiction epic called Children of Men, one of this year's top five movies
Yes, I'm talking about Alfonso Cuarón.Read more
Peter Jackson on Why He Won't Direct "The Hobbit"
Here's TheOneRing.net's big breaking news on The Hobbit...
So, since Peter Jackson will not be directing The Hobbit, but MGM is planning to find another director who will...Read more
Today, I Wrap It Up!
Today is the last day of editing for me on Through a Screen Darkly. I'll get to check the final proof in a few weeks, but this is my last day to make any changes.
What a week it has been. I can't go into details, but let's just say we suffered a significant setback in our process this week that required a great deal of attention to the text. As I am also halfway into writing a new novel, and I'm working on edits for the first novel, Auralia's Colors, it's an understatement to say that I'm exhausted. And I still have another day of editing on this book left.Read more
Sight and Sound Celebrates "Pan's Labyrinth"
I've seen Pan's Labyrinth, and it is a harrowing, beautiful film. It leaves me with as many questions about the artist as it does about the story, and so, reading Sight and Sound's coverage of the film, I'm happy to learn a lot more about Guillermo Del Toro, and what an interesting, conflicted, brave, dedicated visionary he is.Read more