The Prestige (Warner Bros.; 1996) - Directed by Stanley Kubrick; Starring Daniel Day Lewis as Robert Angier, Gary Goldman as Alfred Borden, Alan Wheatley as John Cutter, Elizabeth Garvie as Sarah Borden, Lisa Langlois as Olivia Wenscombe, Louis Jourdan as Nikola Tesla; Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, Cinematography by John Alcott, Executive Producer Jan Harlan
Is this a fan-made poster, or did that book somehow get adapted earlier without me knowing? Guessing the former, in which case it’s quite pretty; that said, who can say what butterflies affect actor availability, or even if the novel is written in its familiar form. If it were to get a different adaptation, I hope whoever tackles it makes it more faithful to the book; I do enjoy the film we got IOTL, but after reflecting on the plot differences I recognise the novel is more cerebral and thematically nuanced… also, Christopher Nolan’s admitted urge to kill off female love interests as a source of dramatangst has started to sour me on seeing him do it anymore post-
Inception (and don’t get me started on how underwhelming
Interstellar ended up).
Personally, I'm loathe to totally butterfly The Lion King, principally because it's such a good film. It was also a project that Disney had had in mind since before The Little Mermaid was made (it was originally called King of the Jungle), so it's not like it was just an Eisner/Katzenberg idea.
Having said that, there is one change I'd like to see to The Lion King ITTL - Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson as either Timon and Pumbaa or Banzai and Ed (Ed would of course talk here). These are roles they were actually considered for OTL.
No disrespect to Nathan Lane/Ernie Sabella/Cheech Marin, but Rik and Ade would have been AWESOME in either of those two roles.
Allegedly, Tim Rice really wanted Rik and Ade for Timon and Pumbaa (even writing Hakuna Matata based on the show Bottom), but Disney couldn't get them for whatever reason.
Is that so? I assumed that: a) the big HCA stories had been desired for adaptation since Walt’s time (pretty sure he at least had
The Snow Queen as a plan in the 1950s), as well as B&TB, predating what became
The Lion King; b) the point of divergence was early enough the idea might not have come up; and c) similar to
Mistress Masham’s Repose and other cancelled OTL projects, the idea might just have not gotten off the ground, especially with how much innovation is already put into projects that are more successful here… Mind you, I may be wrong and we’ll get some version of TLK later, but until it’s mentioned I’m not going to assume it’s locked-in… and again, especially with Jim’s Japan fixation, they may decide it’s just too similar to
Kimba the White Lion (I am aware it’s not wholly derivative, but creativity may have Jim want to do it elsewhere).
Or hell, maybe some “defectors” who really want to do the idea go to Bluth/Eisner with it. I dunno…
Thinking about it, I’m not totally surprised that the idea of an African animal movie (even if said original title completely misplaces the habitat of lions just like Edgar Rice Burroughs did, among other errors he made…) was considered as far back as the 80s. We tend to mythologise Africa as this wild and beautiful land (not without reason), exotic, savage, undiscovered… Sir Michael Bond originally meant Paddington to be from “darkest Africa” before discovering that it has no bears, which led to “darkest Peru” when he researched the Spectacled Bear (or Andean bear). For a lot of westerners, there’s a raw beauty that makes the wild appealing (same for other cultures).
EDIT: Corrected the South American bear species…