Paradise still lost

Film So I'm checking the Time Out Film Blog and my eyes boggle at a headline. If I'd had rabbit ears they would have shifted up to a point.

Hollywood finds 'Paradise Lost'

Say that again!

Hollywood finds 'Paradise Lost'

When I was a school studying Milton's Paradise Lost books nine and ten, throughout my A-Levels I decided that this would be amazing source material for a film. It had fantasy, sex and violence and as Jurassic Park had just been released I knew that in a few years the technology would be available for a modern interpretation. Over the years I even imagined that a film had already been made in the silent era, perhaps by Murnau -- then I realised I was possibly remembering a late night viewing of Faust when I was very young. But the idea stuck, especially with amazingly cinematic passages such as ...

"The sun was sunk, and after him the star
Of Hesperus, whose office is to bring
Twilight upon the earth, short arbiter
"twixt day and night, and now from end to end
Night's hemisphere had veil'd the horizon round:
When satan, who late fled before the threats
Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improv'd
In meditated fraud and malice, bent
On Man's destruction, maugre what might hap
Of heavier on himself, fearless returned
From compassing the earth; cautious of day,
Since Uriel, regent of the sun, descried
His entrance, and foreworned the Cherubim
That kept their watch; thence full of anguish driven,
The space of seven continued nights he rode
With darkness; thrice the equinoctial line
He circled; four times crossed the car of night
From pole to pole, traversing each colure;
On the eighth returned; and, on the coast averse
From entrance or Cherubick watch, by stealth
Found unsuspected way. There was a place,
Now not, though sin, not time, first wrought the change,
Where Tigris, at the foot of Paradise,
Into a gulf shot under ground, till part
Rose up a fountain by the tree of life:
In with the river sunk, and with it rose
Satan, involved in rising mist; then sought
Where to lie hid; sea he had searched, and land,
From Eden over Pontus and the pool
Maeotis, up beyond the river Ob;
Downward as far antarctick; and in length,
West from Orontes to the ocean barred
At Darien ; thence to the land where flows
Ganges and Indus: Thus the orb he roamed
With narrow search; and with inspection deep
Considered every creature, which of all
Most opportune might serve his wiles; and found
The Serpent subtlest beast of all the field. "

That's just a description of Satan coming to Earth looking for a vessel so that he can temp Eve into tempting Adam and bringing the fall. The fall is exceptional too, but a tad long for here. But really can't you imagine that realised as a sweep across the land with a score by Howard Shore? So I read on...

Forget 'Kingdom of Heaven', 'Titanic' and 'Gladiator' ? Legendary Pictures have just announced plans to bring the most epic story of them all to the big screen ? 'Paradise Lost'.

Look at that hyperbole. And it's being made by a company called LEGENDARY Pictures so it has to be good. Start the 'Rachel McAdams for Eve' campaign right now...

John Milton's extraordinary 1667 poem revolves around Lucifer's failed rebellion in heaven and his part in the fall of man and Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

Good synopsis actually. This is the story. Shakespeare pottered about the subject Milton went in with his sleeves rolled up and got his hands dirty. This is going to be great, amazing and amazingly amazing. Who's the director going to be? Peter Jackson? Ridley Scott?

Scott Derrickson ('The Exorcism of Emily Rose') will develop and direct the project, although Legendary Pictures boss Thomas Tull says we shouldn't hold our breath for the film's release.

What?

'Given the gravity of the source material, it's really important to get it right' he told Variety. 'It will be ready when it's ready.'

So you're hiring the writer of Urban Legends: Final Cut and the director of the film which made the story of an excorism boring? Really? I think this is going to be a long wait. Still it could have been worse -- it could have been Uwe Boll or Tim Story.

I'd imagine a producer at Hallmark Entertainment is already on the phone to someone about a spoiler project. Jill Hennessy will be essaying the part of Eve and Eric Roberts as Satan and before the summer is out. I hope Uli Edel has a space in his calender...