On a very basic level, George Orwell’s 1984 is to dystopian novels of the future as A Princess of Mars is to fantastical tales of adventure. And hopefully going back to the source works out better for Imagine Entertainment (the production company run by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer) and LBI Entertainment as they are currently working closely to “develop a new take on the 20th century classic.”
That being said, the phrase “new take” might also be the original overwhelmingly vague term in the filmmaking world, so who knows what it might mean to Imagine and LBI. There was, of course, a movie version of 1984 already released back in 1984 that starred John Hurt and Richard Burton.
Interestingly it seems that Shepard Fairey, the artist whose claim to fame was the creation of Barack Obama’s “Hope” poster, has been one of the project’s main advocates and pushed the idea of a new adaptation of Orwell’s seminal book. Fairey brought the idea to Imagine who in turn took it to Orwell’s estate. They there discovered that LBI was also trying to secure the rights, and the two studios decided to work together and strike the dystopian iron that THE HUNGER GAMES has set up while it is still hot.
Imagine and LBI are currently on the lookout for writers to tackle a first draft.
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