Happy Birthday, Alan Moore. One of the greatest comic book writers ever, his works include the iconic V for Vendetta, the deeply esoteric work Promethea, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the Jack The Ripper themed From Hell, Watchmen, Swamp Thing and others.
Many of his comics have, much to his great disdain, become big-budget Hollywood films. If you like any of the movies, we suggest you read the original works. They are amazing.
In celebration of his big day, let’s all take a journey into Alan’s vastly imaginative mind.
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.
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.
Oftentimes, behind an Academy Award-winning film is a magnificent — and, occasionally, better than the film itself — novel that inspired it Here is a lengthy list of some novels-turned-movies that received Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nominations (or, in some cases, wins), including the 2013 nominees:
