Ever since The Lord of the Rings graced our screens and won all those Oscars (whether or not they were deserved is open to debate), it was inevitable that Hollywood would grab the cash cow by the udders and milk it for all its worth.

So far, the resulting produce has been somewhat sour in taste: we’ve had the likes of Arthur, Troy and Kingdom Of Heaven, some CGI-heavy and, frankly, disappointing attempts to cash in on Peter Jackson’s success (come on, there’s no point denying otherwise, is there?). But now, at last, comes the oldest surviving English manuscript that Professor Tolkien himself had been inspired by. That’s right -  the poem Beowulf is to be turned into a Hollywood movie.

The Robert Zemeckis (DVDs)-directed
‘epic’ (about a sixth-century Scandinavian warrior who slays a monster
and subsequently becomes king – oops, just spoiled the plot… sorry) is
currently in development, but word is already spreading that there are
some big names attached to the project.

Like who? Well, how about Sir Anthony Hopkins? That’s quite a big name, isn’t it? What about Ray Winstone, then, who had a role in Arthur? No? Robin Wright Penn? She was in Forrest Gump. And what about Brendan Gleeson, who was in… ahem, Troy and Kingdom Of Heaven.

The
film apparently pioneers new techniques in 3D filming called
performance capture, a process Zemeckis played around with in his
fairly-successful Christmas romp The Polar Express. The actors
perform their roles in motion capture suits, which then gets run
through the computer and… oh, you all know the general basics of it by
now. Let’s just say it will be Gollum tenfold, but with less
schizophrenia.

The script has been written by Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman, scribes of The Rules of Attraction and Princess Mononoke respectively. And Avary used to work with Quentin Tarantino (he worked on both Pulp Fiction and the infinitely-superior Reservoir Dogs), so there is a chance that this adaptation could have some bite to it.

Columbia
Pictures is currently negotiating with the aforementioned cast
wish-list even as we speak (probably— we can’t actually tell from our
vantage point), but it is still too early to confirm whether any of
them will sign on.
Beowulf is scheduled for a 2007 release. More news as it develops.

[story by James Hickey]