Daniel Craig And Heath Ledger Top Choices For Lucifer In Paradise Lost: The Movie

The New York Times today has a piece on the planned $100 million feature film of Paradise Lost, likely to be directed by Scott Derickson. Derickson proved with The Exorcism of Emily Rose that he believes in the precise superstitions requisite to render this story of a War in Heaven with absolute sincerity and a sense of great importance.

"This could be like The Lord of the Rings or bigger" says Vincent Newman, the film's producer. Yeah, it could be, Vincent. He names both Daniel Craig and Heath Ledger as top choices for the role of Lucifer.

Talking of that ol' Devil, Stanley Fish, the author of Surprised in Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost, is quoted as saying "In the introductory books the figure of Satan is presented with a certain kind of heroic glaze surrounding him, but then, as the poem proceeds, Milton quite deliberately, and for some readers unforgivably, insists that you see the terrible emptiness and self-aggrandizing narcissism at the heart of this character. You could pull the audience in by giving them the kind of romantic rebel that is so easy to respond to, and then pull them up short and ask them to re-think the matter and ask them to think about why this figure has such appeal to them.”