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Robert Zemeckis to Direct Beowulf Movie 206

Posted by CowboyNeal from the new-takes-on-classics dept.
jangobongo writes "Robert Zemeckis, who directed the Polar Express and Back To The Future among many others, will helm a new remake of the epic tale of Beowulf. Sony Pictures is in discussions to distribute the picture. (This version is unrelated to another remake scheduled to be released in 2005 titled Beowulf & Grendel, which is currently in post-production.)" I have no idea which version will make for a better film, but this one has Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary writing the script for it as well.
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Robert Zemeckis to Direct Beowulf Movie More

Robert Zemeckis to Direct Beowulf Movie

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  • Neil (Score:5, Informative)

    by daeley ( 126313 ) * on Saturday January 22, 2005 @01:51PM (#11442015) Homepage
    Neil Gaiman just posted about this [neilgaiman.com] in his online journal.

  • Two modern remakes of Beowulf? (Score:5, Funny)

    by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Saturday January 22, 2005 @01:51PM (#11442019)
    That sounds like the beginnings of a cluster!

    *ducks*

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @01:52PM (#11442029)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Yet Another Beowulf movie? How many is this now? 5? 6?

    • Re:Y.A.B (Score:4, Informative)

      by l2718 ( 514756 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @02:13PM (#11442199)

      Yet Another Beowulf movie? How many is this now? 5? 6?

      Indeed hopefully this one will be better than "The Thirteenth Warrior" [imdb.com]. That movie is based on a Michael Crichton book, "Eaters of the Dead" [crichton-official.com], which is a rather amusing literary exercize.

      • The movie was crappy. The book was good, though.

    • A lot (Score:4, Funny)

      by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @02:13PM (#11442200) Homepage Journal

      Yet Another Beowulf movie? How many is this now? 5? 6?

      There's a lot of them. It's like an entire cluster of movies.

    • Actually, the IMDB lists only one movie titled Beowulf, and it wasn't at all like the poem. There's also an animated short which sounds a lot like a project I have wanted to do for a while.

      Thing is, Beowulf is famous primarily because it's the oldest example of something, not because it's a particularly good story. At its core, it's kind of a dull story: a man goes out and beats up a monster. And that's the good part; in the second half he goes out and beats up the monster's mother, and dies in the proc
      • *Spoiler*

        Beowulf doesn't die beating up Grendel's mother, he dies beating up a dragon that threatens his kingdom many years later.
      • I thought one of the major points was that Beowulf brought home the bacon, as well as the mad shiny riches, to his king and later to his people, and that was what made him so heroic in the story. 'Cause I remember that they were always talking about the loot that Beowulf collected.

        --grendel drago
        • That's kinda typical of the literature that came out of northern Europe in that general time period.

          Check out "Seven Viking Romances", if you haven't already. Seems like they all start out with something like, "This guy gets some of his buddies together and some boats and goes and kills some people and gets a lot of gold, which gives him the finances to do what this story's actually about." Seriously, I'm barely paraphrasing.

          Oh, and if you haven't guessed, "romance" apparantly meant something different ba
    • Yet Another Beowulf movie? How many is this now? 5? 6?

      Yeah - almost enough for a clus...

  • Now Dan can see the movie (Score:3, Funny)

    by Clock Nova ( 549733 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @01:53PM (#11442033)
    Now Dan Rydel can finally say that he's seen the Beowulf movie and mean it.

    Casey: "There's no movie of Beowulf."

    Dan: "Then what the heck movie did I see?"
  • I remember having to read beowulf during my grade 11 english class. I don't remember a thing about it :) Gotta love high school english classes.. I never had any great teachers and they always seemed to be a joke. The movie should be good though... a good director could really make it exciting to watch (and I quite enjoyed back to the future) :)

  • Just imagine... (Score:5, Funny)

    by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Saturday January 22, 2005 @01:53PM (#11442040)
    ...a modern remake of this epic tale!

    What, expecting me to say something else? ;-)
    • If there are a bunch of sequels, do they call it a "cluster"?
  • Remember the story about the computer program that is supposed to pick out hit songs?

    Is there some computer somewhere telling people to make Beowulf clones?

    I mean, I can see why a studio trying to cash in on the latest formula (Lord of the Rings) would be making a movie of Beowulf (I was surprised to see only one King Arthur movie) but two of them at once? Come on!
    • Tell you what, read Neil Gaiman's blog [neilgaiman.com] on this, which the terrifyingly sane and sensible first poster linked.

      And then retract your initial comments, when you realise that a. Gaiman is one of the two writers, b. he wrote it a while ago and Dreamworks rejected it, c. Bob Z. is making it because he was blown away by Gaiman's script.

      Then start to midly freak out because it's going to be motion capture. Like Polar-Bloody-Express.
    • Is there some computer somewhere telling people to make Beowulf clones?

      It's a very common thing in Hollywood to do copycat movies. For instance you had two asteroid movies at once (Deep Impact and Armageddon), and Dreamworks did Antz as a copycat of Bug's Life, and Shark Tale as a copycat of Finding Nemo. Apparently it's pretty vicious- _The Hot Zone_ was being made into a movie but got shelved after that awful disease movie with Cuba Gooding Jr. ended up further along in production.

  • "Beowulf & Grendel"

    I know that Beowulf is a cluster of Linux servers, but what is a Grendel?

  • Surely this can't be any better than the version with Highlan^H^H^H^H^H^H^H errr, Christopher Lambert in it! [imdb.com]

  • Wierd Movie Trend (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jbrader ( 697703 ) <stillnotpynchon@gmail.com> on Saturday January 22, 2005 @01:57PM (#11442083)
    So now theres two Beowulf movies coming soon and two War of the Worlds. I think its interesting to watch interpretations of the same source material by very different teams of filmakers. But I think this is the first time airs of movies have opened so near each other in time.

    • Re:Wierd Movie Trend (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jhoger ( 519683 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @02:24PM (#11442272) Homepage
      Yeah Hollywood whines about their copyrights being violated, but once again the public domain is where they get their best source material.

      -- John.

      • So what happens once Hollywood has remade every story familiar to Americans and first published on or before December 1922? Will Hollywood finally get the guts to demand a repeal of the unwritten policy of perpetual copyright on the installment plan? Or will the entertainment industry all have merged into one conglomerate that incidentally doesn't have to worry about infringing its own copyrights?

        • So what happens once Hollywood has remade every story familiar to Americans and first published on or before December 1922?

          They make the sequels.

        • Oh, man, if you believe that Hollywood cares about getting original material, you're nuts.

          Besides, they've got plenty of authors who optioned their estates, like Isaac Asimov or Philip K. Dick, so they can piss on their graves for many years to come.

          --grendel drago
  • I did a quick IMDB search and found a 1999 beowulf, a sci-fi version. Musta been straight to video.

  • Grendel's Mom (Score:3)

    by weston ( 16146 ) <westonsd@@@canncentral...org> on Saturday January 22, 2005 @02:01PM (#11442109) Homepage
    Grendel's mother is so fat, she have to... well... I mean, she's so... actually, I guess she is large, but mostly that has the effect that she's menacing to tough medieval warrior types. Hmmmmm.

  • The sad thing is... (Score:3, Informative)

    by TooMuchEspressoGuy ( 763203 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @02:01PM (#11442111)
    ...that once Neil Gaiman is done writing an epic, intelligent script akin to his work in the medium of novels and graphic novels, Hollywood execs are probably going to pick it apart piece by piece. In the end, it will likely be just a bunch of random action sequences with little in the way of plot to tie it together, and with Neil's name attached to it to attract his fans.

    Then again, Hollywood hasn't ruined *everything* it has touched (think of the LotR movies.) There might still be hope.

    • Re:The sad thing is... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Brett Buck ( 811747 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @02:08PM (#11442165)
      But those hollywood execs are just working for our best interest! Good story, it just needs a little "punching up" - you know, a few car chases, explosions, and maybe a wise-cracking robot! People like that.

    • There is no possible way that they can make this movie as bad as the 1999 version.

      There are a lot of really bad movies out there, it's true. Most of the moderately bad ones are boring; the truly terrible ones actually end up being fun to watch simply because they're such absolute crap. When they premiered the infamous "Manos: The Hands of Fate," the audience actually laughed uproariously.

      But there is no redemption for the '99 Beowulf.

      Imagine it.... Sitting there for two hours, unable to divert your ga

      • Have you seen 1995's "Theodore Rex"? I had the misfortune of picking it from a pile of tapes to pass the evening. It's... well, it has to be seen to be believed.

        Prepare to eat your hat, sir.

        --grendel drago
      • Hmmm, sounds like you've never seen american ninja 5, or cyborg cop, or freddy got fingered.... God I hate that movie, I'll never get my brother back for that. He seems to think project viper was fair game, but I beg to differ.

    • Re:The sad thing is... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jameth ( 664111 )
      It's worth noting that Neil Gaiman also signed on to do the rewrites, so the changes they make will be going largely through him. Also, Zemeckis and the others working on it are usually good, so I wouldn't give up hope just yet.

  • But...? (Score:5, Funny)

    by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @02:02PM (#11442121) Journal
    Will it be done in Anglo-Saxon, or in that sucky post-Norman dialect?

    • Re:But...? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by plasticsquirrel ( 637166 )

      Whatever language they decide for or against, the key to this movie is going to be in the settings and culture of the people. Anglo-Saxon art and ideas are very captivating, and if the directors use this well, they could make a very good movie. If they do not, we will probably end up with another ridiculous movie like Troy.

      On a side note, Rohan from the Lord of the Rings books/movies is based on Anglo-Saxon culture. In fact, the Theoden character takes his name from a character in Beowulf, (Th)eoden. Tolki

      • I think that this is reflected in Rohan (Anglo-Saxon) and Gondor (post-Norman), and their roles in the books.

        That's a little dubious. Tolkien goes out of his way a number of times to portray the Numenoreans as somehow nobler and better than the other peoples of Middle-earth, including the Rohirrim to whom they were historically related.

        Now, that's not to say that Gondor hadn't fallen from its original lofty ideal, but I get the impression he still favoured Gondor over Rohan. He admired the heroism and

  • Riiiiight. (Score:3, Funny)

    by And They Called Her ( 845239 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @02:06PM (#11442146)
    Proof that the only idea that still exists in movie-making is 'Let's drag X up and recycle it.' I predict the Beowulf movies will be at least as good as Troy and Alexander.

  • Beowulf II (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @02:06PM (#11442148) Homepage Journal
    Hollywood is a ridiculous echo chamber. After a millenium and a half, they finally make [imdb.com] a Beowulf in 1998, after a century of movies, so they make another in 1999. Then they make another two in 2005. They're more "me, too" than Usenet. Ever since the biz stopped being run by gamblers [imdb.com], it's gone straight down the tubes.
    • The 98 release was a 30 minute made for TV cartoon. The 99 release stared Chistopher Lambert. I really don't count either of these as serious screen adaptations. I'm glad that Beowulf has been taken on as a big budget production with a talanted director and writers.

    • Re:Beowulf II (Score:3, Informative)

      by ari_j ( 90255 )
      The Beowulf film with Christopher Lambert is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I made a more accurate cinematic version of the epic poem for my high school English class, entitled "The Beo Wulf Project." With WWF wrestling, running through the woods, and driving a pickup truck like listening to Extreme, it was still better than the 1999 film.

  • Clusters (Score:3, Funny)

    by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @02:15PM (#11442213) Journal
    Will it include honey nut clusters or just them weird computer-thingy-ma-jiggy ones? We don't want to confuse the public with their breakfast and spyware infested super networks now do we?
  • I have no idea which version will make for a better film, but this one has Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary writing the script for it as well.

    Doesn't that pretty much answer the question right there? I mean... no disrespect to the Icelander and his crew making the other film, but... Gaiman's shopping lists are more entertaining than most screenwriters' final drafts, and hardly anyone writing for any medium today does legend/mythology better.

    • Damnit! Now you've got me itching to read his shopping lists!
    • A funny thing is that after Neil Gaiman wrote this script, a lot of people he told misheard "Beowulf" and thought he had written a script for a "Baywatch" episode. He took this misuderstanding and used it in a creative way, writing the short story "Bay Wolf", which is about a werewolf detective hired to protect people at a beach gym from attacks by Grendel every night.

  • These will be good, but I'm looking forward to... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rob Carr ( 780861 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @02:23PM (#11442261) Homepage Journal
    the Mel Brooks version!

  • ...helm a new remake ...

    I'm not a language nazi. You can mispell, mispunctuate, screw up your grammar, and otherwise horrify your High School English teacher, and I won't flame you, just as long as I understand what you're trying to say. But I draw the line at people who chose their words because they look cool, regardless of meaning. In this case "helm" instead of "direct" is only mildly lame, but "remake" instead of "adaptation"? A remake is a new version of an old movie. Of course, words change their

  • Everyone's missing a good one... (Score:3, Informative)

    by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @02:35PM (#11442345)
    Check out "The Thirteenth Warrior" with Antonio Banderas, believe it or not. Based on the real writings of a travling muslim cleric that ran into a bunch of Vikings at a funeral. The novel/movie takes that and runs with it, right into the Beowulf story. Actually very enjoyable, and well done, I thought.
    • Uh, The 13th Warrior (the movie) was based on Michael Crichton's novel Eaters of the Dead. So, uh, it's not exactly "based on the real writings of a travling muslim cleric."

      Crichton's novel was loosely based on the epic poem Beowulf, but it's not trying to be terribly true to the original.

      p
      • Ah, but Crichton's genius was in taking the Beowulf story, and inserting a narrator in the form of Ibn Fadlan - the protagonist in the movie - who was a real guy, and really did write about his meeting with crust Norsemen. Check out this [vikinganswerlady.com] for some background. I didn't suggest that the plot of the novel/movie was based on that guy, but that that guy was a lunching point for the structure of the story Crichton built. Then, add some Beowulf and some HG Wells.
  • I was quite surprised when I actually read Beowulf to find out that there's a lot more than just Grendel and Family, that just the first half of the book or so. Later on there's some warring, a lot more speeches, some speeches about warring, then a battle with a dragon. Yet other than some references that came from that latter section I'd never actually been aware of this additional portion of the story, it was quite perplexing while reading the book when I thought it had "finished" and I was only half way

  • As long as it's not like that awful version.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Alpha27 ( 211269 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @03:09PM (#11442638)
    staring Christopher Lambert with short blonde hair, set in a post-apocalypitic world. Now that was a bad movie, and the overly used sex scenes didn't add to the movie, though were enjoyable for there moments of interlude.

  • Grendel (Score:3, Informative)

    by tm2b ( 42473 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @03:12PM (#11442670) Journal
    I hope that Gaiman takes some influence from John Gardner's Grendel [amazon.com], which attempts to tell the story from the monster's point of view. I wouldn't expect most writers to know about it, but Gaiman? It's a good bet.

    In short, it tells the story of how Grendel first tries to make friends with the humans and is attacked out of their fear, and then is later used as a scapegoat for Hrothgar's (the human king's) treachery. He responds by attacking out of anger at the humans' pettiness and hypocrisy, outrage at the storyteller's lies about him.

    Marillion did a song based on the book and it appears on their CD, B-Sides Themselves [amazon.com]. The song is somewhat reminiscent of Genesis' Foxtrot in parts, highlighting Marillion's origin as a Genesis cover band.

  • Let's hope they tell it right... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by popo ( 107611 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @04:13PM (#11443171) Homepage
    I just re-read the latest (and imho greatest) Beowulf translation by Seamus Heaney. (If anyone is interested in re-reading it, this translation is stunningly good.)

    The problem with making a major film version of the poem is that Beowulf is the most anti-Hollywood tale ever told. When most people summarize the story they reduce the lengthy plot down to something like this: a foreign hero comes to a land plagued by a horrible demon, slays the demon (and the demon's mother) and lives happily ever after.

    Unfortunately for Hollywood screenwriters, that's not the whole story. Beowulf is a far more modern tale about a rarely discussed subject: Life in the aftermath of fame. Its an almost depressing story about a hero whose greatest achievement occurs early-on in his career. Beowulf slays his adversaries surprisingly soon in the text -- and then must live on in an exhausted world (filled with far less glamour) for the rest of his long days.

    The story ends -- without another climax, without another conflict. At times the reader has to wonder, "where's this story going?", and the truth is: It isn't going anywhere, and neither is Beowulf. And that's the painful part of the story -- that Beowulf's finest years and greatest deeds are already done.

    Its hardly the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters, and the chances are good that the story will be Hollywood-ized with an abbreviated ending. A far more interesting (and accurate film) would include the bulky second part of the poem where the conflict shifts from man vs. monster to man vs. himself.

    -Popo


    • Sorry -- my roommate just blasted into me for saying that there's no more climaxes. Ok so there's the dragon story. Blah blah blah. Its an appendage. Its so less climactic than the Grendel fight its absurd.
    • I just re-read the latest (and imho greatest) Beowulf translation by Seamus Heaney.

      I don't care for the Heaney translation myself--it's not faithful to either the letter or the spirit of the original.
      Just one example of how flat the whole thing feels to me: lines 499-501, where the Danish thane Unferth challenges Beowulf. Heaney not only mis-translates it, he misrepresents the whole scene. Unferth is described as "he aet fotum saet frean Scyldinga", literally, "he (who) sat at the feet of the lord

  • What about the Tain then? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by panurge ( 573432 ) on Saturday January 22, 2005 @04:52PM (#11443473)
    When is Hollywood going to make the Tain Bo Cuailnge? (The Cattle Raid of Cooley)?

    Has everything. Feisty queen, wet husband, flawed hero with spectacular attributes (Cu Chulainn did an Incredible Hulk transformation 1500 years ago), setpiece personal combats, battles, and a few additional legends to provide subplots. And it's Culture with a capital C, and no charge for an option on the script. Of course in the past Hollywood has struggled with the Irish language, but after Alexander I have a solution: Play Cu Chulainn with a Greek accent.

  • Beowulf Movie? (Score:4, Funny)

    by hunterx11 ( 778171 ) <hunterx11@g3.1415926mail.com minus pi> on Saturday January 22, 2005 @07:16PM (#11444345) Homepage Journal
    So. We have seen many a slashdotter
    Grieve and grumble greatly over films.
    "Classics ruined!" they clamor. "Memories killed!" they cry.
    Should Greedo shoot first? Surely nay.
    Why then should they not whimper and whine
    When they hear this horror, a Beowulf film!
    Scyld Scefing? Shield Sheafson? Sam Soros?
    Which woeful name for the screen will be chosen?
    Michael Crichton told a tale once;
    The movie was made, many watched.
    Sadly it sucked. Sigh.
  • ....will it be just the one, or a whole cluster?

  • I never watched it because the reviews of it were so awful, but Michael Crichton's book (EATERS OF THE DEAD) was actually a modern re-telling of Beowulf, and it was made into the movie THE 13TH WARRIOR, starring Antonio "youcantunderstandmythickaccent" Banderas.

  • speaking of retellings of Beowulf (Score:3, Insightful)

    by justins ( 80659 ) on Sunday January 23, 2005 @02:55AM (#11446412) Homepage Journal
    I read part of Beowulf in high school (of course) but didn't read it all the way through, and enjoy it, until I read Seamus Heaney's translation a couple of years ago. One thing I found striking while I was reading the later portion of the book, which wasn't required reading in high school, was how much Tolkien borrowed from Beowulf.

    He borrows from Arthurian myth among other things, but the whole bit about the thief sneaking in and stealing a goblet from the dragon, and the dragon razing the countryside, was obviously taken from Beowulf.

    In the grave on the hill a hoard it guarded,
    in the stone-barrow steep. A strait path reached it,
    unknown to mortals. Some man, however,
    came by chance that cave within
    to the heathen hoard. In hand he took
    a golden goblet, nor gave he it back,
    stole with it away, while the watcher slept,
    by thievish wiles: for the warden's wrath
    prince and people must pay betimes!

    Yadda yadda yadda... this etext translation isn't as good as Heaney's. :)

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