Call me Is, Shocked! WANTED director hired for MOBY DICK!
In a huge deal, Universal have hired Timur Bekmambetov, the director behind their adrenaline filled near $300 million worldwide summer blockbuster movie WANTED to spearhead a new adaptation of the classic MOBY DICK. God, can you imagine how awesome that would look? Bizarrely, the movie was spec'd by the writers of ACCEPTED and NEW YORK MINUTE! WTF? The usual fluffy and unadventurous writers have taken Herman Melville's much lauded 1851 original text and changed the structure from a first person narration by Ishmael and made the movie more graphically violent. Also gone is the idea of Ahab being an obsessive Captain who is intent on killing the whale for his own vendetta, instead he will be projected as a charismatic leader. Bizarre.
"Our vision isnt your grandfathers Moby Dick, " Cooper said. "This is an opportunity to take a timeless classic and capitalize on the advances in visual effects to tell what at its core is an action-adventure revenge story."The best known MOBY DICK movie, and a personal favourite of mine was Jack Huston's 1956 version starring Gregory Peck and even Orson Welles from a screenplay by Ray Bradbury.
Could look absolutely amazing from Bekmambetov if he remembers structure and maybe to let the story tell the story at times and not himself. What big potential a MOBY DICK movie has in the modern day era of film-making.
Peter Jackson, Steven Spielberg. Would love to see them crack it but instead it's Bekmambetov, not untalented, quite the opposite actually. But this is a BIG LEAP forward. We wish him well.
source - variety