Imagine our shock when we read this:
Alex Proyas is finding “Paradise Lost” for Legendary Pictures, signing to direct an adaptation of the epic 17th-century English poem by John Milton. … The project tells the story of the epic war in heaven between archangels Michael and Lucifer, and will be crafted as an action vehicle that will include aerial warfare, possibly shot in 3D.
Proyas’ credits include sci-fi disaster thriller “Knowing,” “I, Robot” and “The Crow.”
Read on for our reactions and an awesome photoshop contest.
As you can imagine, this email generated a ton of traffic on our internal OTI writers mailing list. A representative sampling:
Belinkie: Imagine Pete’s face as he reads that article. I’m imagining one of those Loony Toons effects where his eyes pop out of his head, head the computer screen, and then his eyes grow little eyes that also pop out.
Mlawski: “Proyas’ credits include sci-fi disaster thriller ‘Knowing,’ ‘I, Robot’ and ‘The Crow.'” So you know this shit’s gonna be good.
Perich: “Possibly shot in 3D”? Possibly? Didn’t you get the memo, Proyas?
Fenzel: Since this is by the guy who did “I. Robot,” I expect a movie about two WWI flying aces battling each other in heaven, followed by a contest at the Pennsylvania State Fair where a man and woman compete to eat as many apples as possible in five minutes.
Perich: This movie will be unsurpassably boring. [Oh poopy. You’re unsurpassably boring. —Ed.]
Belinkie: Okay, let’s cast this movie. Who gets to play Satan? I’m going to say Jude Law.
Lee: Sam Worthington plays Archangel Michael. Duh.
Perich: Paul Bettany needs to be in it; he’s in everything vaguely blasphemous.
Belinkie: See, I thought about Gerard Butler as Satan.
But isn’t Satan supposed to be ridiculously gorgeous? He’s the Morning Star, right? Not that they will necessarily stick to the source text, but my money is still on a pretty boy who can ALSO do action. In other words, Jude Law if they are going highbrow, Channing Tatum if we’re really lucky.
Fenzel:
Adam – Taylor Lautner
Eve – Vanessa Hudgens
Satan – Gerard Butler
Sin – Helena Bonham Carter
Gabriel – Idris Elba
Raphael – Chow Yun Fat
Michael – Kiefer Sutherland
The Son – Entirely computer generated, voiced by five different actors
The Father – not really a person
Perich: What about taglines? How about:
JULY 2012
LET…
(smash-cut of Helena Bonham Carter draping her hands around Taylor Lautner’s chiselled abs)
HELL…
(smash-cut of a crawling pit of CGI demons)
REIGN
(smash-cut of Gerard Butler and Kiefer Sutherland leaping toward each other in slow-mo)
Belinkie: “This year, Fall will come early. Paradise Lost: July 2012”
Lee: I would totally Photoshop the hell out of this movie poster. Heck, we should make it a photoshop/tagline contest for our readers.
Wrather: Great! My contribution will be copy/pasting everyone else’s clever ideas into a new post (being an editor is awesome!) and exhorting our readers to submit their own Photoshopped movie posters with stars and a tagline of their choice.
What do you think, Overthinkers? Do you have what it takes to photoshop the hell (get it?) out of a movie poster for an action spectacular based on the first 15% of Milton’s Paradise Lost, the unsurpassed and unsurpassable greatest work of literature in any language ever? Extra points for stereoscopic effects. Link ’em up on the comments, and we’ll vote on our favorites.
What happens when I see a challenge when I’m sleep deprived:
http://bit.ly/dlxxQg
Because Hollywood is not only out of ideas for films. Its also out of ideas for posters.
Behold – in all of its teal and orange glory – the poster for Paradise lost:
http://i51.tinypic.com/o7nevb.jpg
I’m with Perich in casting Paul Bettany in the movie…although it might be redundant if he landed the role of Michael since he already played that part.
As I’ve never actually read Paradise Lost, I decided that the “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” approach was the most appropriate.
http://i52.tinypic.com/11kcwhz.jpg
Adam – Taylor Lautner
Eve – Vanessa Hudgens
I just gagged a little.
…but my money is still on a pretty boy who can ALSO do action.
Tom Welling? James Marsden?
I’ve not got any photoshop skills, so I will offer the snark I read in my Sunday paper… that scenes in Eden have been cut/reshot/rewritten on account of the fact that in initial tests, the nudity was putting off the Christian audiences that the film really hopes to win money with. As a Christian, I’d like to qualify that by saying the reactionary stereotypical American Christianishes are being put off the film.
But unsurpassed and unsurpassable this one is not going to be.
Man, GIMP is not easy to figure out.
Anyway, here’s my terrible attempt at a one-sheet.
http://i53.tinypic.com/1181ym8.jpg
These posters are making my day. Keep ’em coming!
Here’s an approach inspired by the beautiful typography of the original book. Haven’t actually read the book, either.
http://i55.tinypic.com/2w54uax.jpg
Ha! That’s brilliant. Nice use of the Font, how did you do it?
I did the poster with Indesign, using the Fell Types by Igino Marini. A pretty nice set of fonts actually.
“Paradife Loft”, eh?
Sweet poster though!
Why is it that I suddenly feel like I am never again allowed to bitch about a movie adaptation of a comic?
I haven’t had time to put together a more clever submission, but this one ties into the next article re: IMDB top 250 movies.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49718003@N07/5036692276/
Here’s my submission. I guessed at some cast and crew and picked a quote from Raphael, when he’s telling the story of the war in heaven to Adam and Eve. He sums things up nicely, I think.
http://tiny.cc/hybq6
Way to go all out with the credit text at the bottom–though some of it is too small to make out. Can you repost either the image at higher resolution, or the plain text in the comments?
Here are the accreditations, sorry for the difficulty in reading, the font I used is a jerk, and copying and pasting is just too easy.
WARNER BRPS. PICTURES PRESENTS
IN ASSOCIATION WITH LEGENDARY PICTURES “PARADISE LOST” PATRICK WILSON CATE BLANCHETT RUFUS SEWELL SAM WORTHINGTON AND PAUL BETTANY
Music By MARCO BELTRAMI Costume Designer WENDY PARTRIDGE Edited by RICHARD LEAROYD Production Designer STEVEN JONES-EVANS Director of Photography SIMON DUGGAN Co-Executive Producers SOME PEOPLE I DIDN’T BOTHER MAKING UP
Based on the Novel (I know it’s a poem, but that was the option) by JOHN MILTON Story by BYRON WILLINGER & PHILIP DE BLASI Screenplay by STUART HAZELDINE Directed by ALEX PROYAS Co-produced by THOMAS TULL, JON NASHI & VINCENT NEWMAN
These are either made up based on people Proyas has worked with before, random actors I’ve casted, or the real writers and producers.
I realized my previous poster didn’t discuss the fact this may be in 3D! So here’s another one, with teal and orange tinting as necessary in any modern poster.
Link! (can’t believe I forgot that part)
http://tiny.cc/jmhmf