h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The BBC production has been AGES coming. The BBC website now says that it is 'coming soon'. I suspect when Poldark finishes.

When I babble on about it at work, nobody seems to know what I am talking about. (But that's no different to most of the stuff I talk about at work......)

PP.

I will be very interested, but I am also rather wary. For a start, how will they convert the prose-heavy writing style of the novel into a visual medium? I can't see how they will be able to preserve the deliberately archaic language. There isn't enough dialogue to do that, certainly. And what about the footnotes? Those are some of the best bits!

The three of us care, but that seems to be the extent of the interest, sadly. You are right about the difficulty converting the prose-heavy book into something effective on the screen. Chances are, though, that casting the right people for the two title roles will go a long way toward making it work.

And who's going to play David Bowie?

"And who's going to play David Bowie?" [GHnomon]

Marc Warren, apparently, assuming that you mean the thistle-haired man.

I care too! Have you seen the trailer? It looks stunning!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UijYwmlCJQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE1nsOoTJos

Looks terrific!
I can remember ploughing through the book, but oddly don't recall much of the plot.

I agree about the trailer. Good work!

I hope it will eventually come to Public television in the U.S., or even on DVD.

I think it's pretty safe to say it will get a DVD release. Everything gets a DVD release. Bluray too, these days.

Bertie Carvel, doesn't have red hair and Jonathan Strange most definitely does. In my fantasy casting I had Julian Rhind-Tutt.

Also I was hoping for Billy Connolly as the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair, I think he could have brought the right balance of charm, sinister intent and enigmatic otherworldiness. Although I'm not disappointed with the casting of Marc Warren.

Just placing this here, because it's awesome! http://jonathanstrangeofficial.tumblr.com/

No date as yet, just that it will be in May and the BBC will give 2 weeks notice.

"Bertie Carvel, doesn't have red hair and Jonathan Strange most definitely does. In my fantasy casting I had Julian Rhind-Tutt."
[Coelacanth]

Hair can be dyed. Plus, surely the author has approval over these things, doesn't she?

They generally don't.

Well, I know of a few extreme cases where authors inveighed against what Hollywood had done to their works [Truman Capote and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" or P.L. Traverse and "Mary Poppins"], but surely there must be a middle ground where a truly awful casting choice would be commented on by the author, and a less awful choice substituted?

The author can of course tell the studio what they think but generally they have no choice in the matter, contractually speaking.

Checking IMDb, her only credited role at this point is as a screenwriter on one episode. I am not so familiar with television, but in movies, when they want to give the author a proper input, they give them an "executive producer" credit, but even that doesn't necessarily mean anything more than them being allowed to sit at the table and occasionally slide a word in edgeways, which the producers and director are free to ignore.
Famously, Alan Moore went to court to have his name retroactively removed from all credits for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and he moved thereafter to make sure he was never credited for 'adaptations' of his work again. Watchmen had a line in the opening credits which said, if I remember correctly, "Based on the graphic novel created by Dave Gibbons", Gibbons of course being the artist who is co-credited with Moore on the book cover.

It's like anything else, I suppose it depends on how much sway the author has. Films made from the books of Stephen King, for example, usually stick pretty closely to the books (and he often has a walk-on part somewhere along the line). Presumably because an author of his standing has enough clout to make it so.

In most cases, though, they won't have a lot of say.

That's not always a bad thing, necessarily; books and films are two very different art forms, and the knowledge of what makes a good novel won't automatically mean you know what makes a good film.

Novelists are sometimes allowed o write the screenplay, but often they are not. Books and movies are very different kettles of fish.

Directors, in turn, can become so disgusted with the way a film turns out that they disown it. From 1968 to 2000, they were able to use the pseudonym Alan Smithee [anagram of "The alias men"]. I don't know what they have done since 2000.

I have a DVD on order ["Accidental Love"], which was directed by David O Russell in 2008 until he was dropped form the project. The current director credit is "Stphen Greene," who seems to be an alias as well.

When the BBC put it up on the iplayer website, its homepage will be here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02ddr5f

Just a preview available at the moment.