Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Mr. and Mrs. Beowulf

via NeilGaiman.com

Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary ("Pulp Fiction") have written a screenplay for Beowulf. Gaiman is quite amused at how the entertainment press don't know the story or understand how the special effects will work. His favorite version of these is intended as satire, but Gaiman says it's not far from what the real news outlets are writing:
Inspired by their success playing a husband-and-wife team of hired killers in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have agreed to star as Mr. & Mrs. Beowulf in the big-budget thriller of the same name.
(Postcards from the Pug Bus)

This is not the Stellan Skaarsgard-Sarah Polley movie filmed in Iceland debuting in Toronto (Beowulf and Grendel)

But the part about Robert Zemeckis ("Forrest Gump," "Castaway," etc) directing: no joke. And he really has cast Angelina Jolie (along with Anthony Hopkins). To which The Independent wrote: "But the star casting by the director Robert Zemeckis, whose previous films include The Polar Express and Cast Away, is set to give Old English poetry a buzz to surpass even the excitement caused by the Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney's translation of the work in 1999."

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