books

Per the Guardian:

Charlie Kaufman is set to write a big-screen adaptation of Slaughterhouse-Five, to be directed by Guillermo del Toro. The screenwriter behind Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich is Del Toro’s preferred writer to work on his film of the 1969 Kurt Vonnegut novel.

I like the pairing. Kaufman is an inventive writer, and the adaptation of Vonnegut book should go better than his past book adaptations. Guillermo del Toro has tremendous vision as a filmmaker, and I trust him with Slaughterhouse-Five.

Of course, this is technically a remake, since Slaughterhouse-Five has already been on the big screen. The 1972 film was described by Vonnegut in his preface to Between Time and Timbuktu as, “a flawless translation of my novel Slaughterhouse-Five to the silver screen.”

As a refresher, here is the trailer:

Vonnegut went on to write in the same preface that, “I drool and cackle every time I watch that film, because it is so harmonious with what I felt when I wrote the book.”

Now it’s Kaufman and del Toro’s turn to bring Vonnegut’s classic anti-war novel, once again, to the big screen. No easy task, even if it’s been done before.

As Hollywood’s imagination seems to be running on fumes these days, film remakes and adaptations of books are becoming the rule rather than the exception.

In the instance of Slaughterhouse-Five, Hollywood is guilty of both.

And so it goes.