Elric Approaches
Empire got the scoop: the Weitz brothers are to adapt Michael Moorcock's Elric novels. While no director is yet attached, Paul Weitz thinks Chris Weitz is the man for the job. Hmmmm. Let's see The Golden Compass first and then decide about his chances with Moorcock.
Would they approach the books in chronological order? Compound some of them? Reorder them? Ignore some? No clues yet.
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This isn't exactly news - I remember discussing this with Mike (name dropping again) in 2005, and it was no secret (It's a matter that has been discussed openly at his website for years).They'd gotten the rights to DARK MATERIALS and were getting grief from the God Squad, backing out of directing it themselves. I called the Elric sequence "unfilmable", what with all the chaos and entropy, and Moorcock said he felt the same until meeting with the Weitzs. Maybe they showed him some convincing pre-viz (apparently, it featured a mock up of Jude Law as Elric). The treatment on he go apparently condenses the books into a trilogy.
I just went looking for Mike's last word on the project and found this on his forums from February - "I was, as it happens, talking to the producers only a week or so ago. Now that work is finished on The Golden Compass they're re-engaging rapidly, they said, with the Elric movie. We've changed approach once or twice as far as the production is concerned -- I think for the better. The 'fantasy noir' idea is paramount at the moment. I'm afraid I can't say much else at this stage, but we're still moving slowly ahead! There's no doubt that the relative failures of some over-budget fantasy movies like Riddick, Van Helsing, even Kong, made Universal take the movie off the front burner for a while, but since then they've had successes with dark, more thoughtful fantasy movies, including Pan's Labyrinth and Children of Men, which, in my view, Elric is closer to in mood."
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