Coming to Review Corner in 2008

The woodcut artists at the Wall Street Journal get lucky every seven years and get to do Angelina Jolie instead of an incoming cabinet secretary or septuagenarian senator.

In OpinionJournal Political Diary, John Fund reports that the Atlas Shrugged movie is coming along: He titles the piece "Porn for College Republicans."

It was published almost 50 years ago, and has sold millions of copies. But only now is Ayn Rand's controversial individualist novel "Atlas Shrugged" about to become a movie starring Angelina Jolie.

Ed Hudgins, editor of the New Individualist, tells me that the screenplay adapting the 1,100-page epic novel is only a couple weeks away from completion. Production is set to begin next year with the release of the film in 2008.

Mr. Hudgins says fans of Atlas should be pleased that the adaptation is being authored by Randall Wallace, the scriptwriter for "Braveheart," Mel Gibson's epic tale of Scottish freedom fighters. "I was fascinated by Rand's book. It was original and provocative," Mr. Wallace told Daily Variety.

For her part, Ms. Jolie has told friends that she finds the character of Dagny Taggart the most powerful female role she can imagine playing. While Ms. Jolie adheres to conventional liberal politics, she is nonetheless a big fan of Rand's sweeping story-telling abilities.

Originally, the plan of producers Howard and Karen Baldwin was to follow the example of the makers of J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," and adapt Rand's sprawling work into a three-part movie. But they were finally convinced that the story should be seen at one sitting, albeit at great length. I guess that means that the speech by anti-collectivist hero John Galt -- which runs to 72 pages in the novel -- will have to be trimmed just a bit.

Posted by jk at December 18, 2006 2:55 PM