Screenplay + major Hollywood production entity...

[Wilf]

Have a look at DD's blog (http://www.dianeduane.com/outofambit/) for details.

Hey Wilf, thanks for putting that up! All I can say is that its interesting, that she would do a movie. Her concerns of the possible movie turning out like Eragon are reasonable...

So You Want To Be A Wizard in theatres (possibly)! YEAH!

[Kathy Li]

Yeah, she leaked it in the last official chat. We quizzed her then, and got a lot of "It's way too early to tell" then, too.

I'm a leetle worried, since DD has previously stated that she'd only do a movie/tv version if she could be executive producer AND screenwriter on the project, and it seems pretty clear from her most recent FAQ LJ entry on the subject of the film, that she may have relinquished (or is ready to relinquish) the first stipulation. Which means far less input.

OTOH, I also trust DD's judgment, and that she'd only give that up if the flick were in the hands of someone she really trusts. I've got my fingers crossed. Please-o-please, at least let her sell the options for a few Brinks trucks' worth of dough!!

[alla]

Oh this is sooo completely and utterly cool... *wants to be at the next chat really badly* I did have a lot more to say, but it seems like I've forgotten - thats how cool it is, I can't think of anything to say.

[Dragon Writer]

*would love a young wizards movie* but only if they don't mess it up...*is hurt by the mess up of eragon, even though i never got too see it* And i hope they listen to her when she tells them they're messing things up...or better yet, THEY DON"T MESS UP!

[Birdhead]

I'm tempted to say that the most interesting thing about the whole shebang (apart from holy omg!!) is dream-casting Pierce Brosnan as the LP. I don't think I could ever see him as a red-head myself, but can anyone check for me if the LP is specifically british/of UK extraction in SYWTBAW? I loaned my copy to a friend.

Still very excited about this, though, even with DD's caveats. *makes thrilled noises*

[Wilf]

The LP can of any nationalality.... but in Hollywood, British (/Irish) actors are felt to make good villans. (Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs being the classic example).

Providing DD keeps script veto, I'll be happy.

[Raine~]

Yes, I read the copy of the last chat and was very interested in it. Thanks for the link. I look forward to further details.

I think a movie of SYWTBAW would be very very interesting. Some of my favorite movies when I was a child include the Princess Bride and others in the genre. (even the old chronicles of narnia movies fascinated me)
Naturally this was before I started reading books, but they were really my first introduction to fantasy. If done right, fantasy movies are simply wonderful, and like the Narnia movies later lead me to read the books, so might a SYWTBAW movie lead others to read the YW series.

[nita2011]

I really want a movie to come out, but think, the cost, the cast. It will take QUITE a long time.
Contact me at elizabeth1ofengland@yahoo.com

[Hogosha]

I think I just died.
I like the little excerpt she posted. "What're they gonna do with all that stuff?" "I dunno. E-bay?"

[Mel]

Oh My. I can't breathe. Oh my.

But anyway, I looove the exerpt. And this: XD


Pierce Brosnan? Pierce Brosnan??

^^ I can honestly say I did not see that coming.

[Raine~]

Haha ^_^ yes I agree with you completely. I hadn't thought about casting the lone power, but there's a lot of interesting things you could do there. Pierce Brosnan is probably a good ideal choice I suppose. Well, you never know I suppose.

And HA the squee part of the journal cracked me up too

[Peter Murray]

Originally posted by Birdhead:
I don't think I could ever see him as a red-head myself, but can anyone check for me if the LP is specifically british/of UK extraction in SYWTBAW?

Well, he says bloody in my copy, but then, it's the Corgi edition.

I thought HW had more of a description of how Nita perceived him, but it doesn't say if she hears him with an accent.

[Nathan]

Interestingly enough, while DD is usually quite coy about the studio who would be producing the YW movie, she was surprisingly candid in this interview (with one of the people from Groupee, so she also discusses these forums a bit), where she states that "the same production company [who did Dark Kingdom (a.k.a. many, many other things), viz., Tandem Communications] is looking at doing the first 'Young Wizards' book as a movie for TV." (However, they don't appear to be the "major Hollywood production entity" mentioned in the FAQ [linked above], so either they aren't the production company to which DD was referring, or this may have fallen through and DD is now in negotiations with a new production company, since the interview was from back in May [which is slightly more than the "six months" mentioned in the FAQ].)

It is also intriguing that she mentions Stephen Fry as her choice for Fred's voice both in that interview and the chat Kathy linked to above, but mentions David Hyde Pierce as her choice in the FAQ. Perhaps she's already found out that Stephen Fry is not a possibility, or maybe she's just had a change of heart.

I will admit to a strong curiosity as to why DD is so interested in seeing the YW universe (and particularly SYWTBAW) make the transition to film, especially given that she claims to have been considering this ever since the book was first published. While I imagine that the "feeding the cats" angle has something to do with it, both for the revenue generated by a successful film, but probably far more from the added publicity it would give the series as a whole, it seems more of a labour of love than anything so purely mercenary (though, as we've seen with TBM, DD is always cognizant of the economic side of things). Is it just that DD is as excited about seeing her universe and stories realized visually as are many of her fans? Or is it that she views SYWTBAW as being somehow fundamentally cinematographic? Or is she simply interested in seeing how others would interpret her books, admittedly under severe constraints (given that she's writing the screenplay)? Or is it something else entirely, or possibly some combination of the above?

Switching gears somewhat, it is obvious from the eBay joke in the screenplay snippet that DD plans on updating SYWTBAW while adapting it for screen. Some idea of the sorts of things she may update can be gleaned from her updates of "Uptown Local." Of course, given that she's making a wholesale adaptation (cf. the screenplay snippet and the original), the updates may be commensurably more substantial.

I first noticed the "Uptown Local" updates from DD's reading for a WizCast, but, based on Kathy's question from this chat (to which DD responds, giving some of her general rationale for making changes), it appears that these were all present in the version included in the 20th anniversary edition of SYWTBAW. (I have vague memories of seeing something definitive when I first posted about this, but that topic's long since been deleted, so I can't say for sure, as I don't have easy access to the 20th anniversary edition.)

As my post on the subject is no longer extant, I'll reproduce the pertinent bits here, along with some other thoughts and changes I noticed that I don't think ever made it onto the forums, for those of you who don't want the fun of figuring out the changes yourself. (Some of them should leap out at you when you listen to/read the updated version, but others are far more subtle.)

The three I originally noticed are the iPod carried by the "pretty African-American girl" on the penultimate train Nita and Kit take (she originally had a Walkman and was "black"), the [something of a spoiler:] <span class="ev_code_white">tense with which the space station and Space Telescope are referred to (and the comment about how the Space Telescope may not be around for long)</span>, as well as the mention of [slight spoiler]<span class="ev_code_white">ESA (the European Space Agency&mdash;going by context, as I don't remember having heard its acronym pronounced before, and thus thought that it was an initialese). The mention of JPL is also new, but I didn't notice that the first time</span>. I noticed it, along with many others when I listened again, this time following along in the original printing in Dragons & Dreams. The most notable of the updates are the fact that Carl has a Nissan instead of a Z80, Tom's computer screen fills up with "words" instead of "green," the tokens are more expensive ($3.00 vs. $1.80), there is an added explanation dealing with the fact that the New York subway system no longer accepts tokens, the timescale at the end is changed to include "or twenty [years]," and [spoilerish]: <span class="ev_code_white">the starship Nita and Kit see blast off activates its "transluminal drive" as opposed to the original "warp drive</span>.<span class="ev_code_white">"</span>

Some of the other differences are simply changes to wording, which may have been made to facilitate reading (if they are not all present in the 20th anniversary version), or simply because DD found the new versions to be more felicitous at this stage in her development as a writer. (And the latter appears to be the case, from DD's comment in the chat linked to above.)

There are also two further quite interesting changes, though neither of them are updates, at least in the sense that I was using previously:

First, and most importantly, the percentage of humans who are wizards is changed from a fairly shocking one in four to a much more reasonable one in twenty (which also is in agreement with the rough values given in the introduction to the YW universe on YW.com). I seem to remember a value for this being given in at least one of the books, but I can't find it in the opening of SYWTBAW (the one definite place I could think to look), and don't feel like browsing through the other books at random at the moment. In addition, the mention that Tom and Carl have "a mailbox full of bills" appears to be new. These, however, are simply the emendation of a somewhat outr&eacute; statement and the addition of a charming bit of incidental detail (which helps to flesh out Tom and Carl's characters), and thus fall, at least in my opinion, well within DD's authorial prerogative as far as revisions are concerned, as do the aforementioned changes in wording.

When considering the actual updates, though, I am of two minds: I certainly don't feel that there is really any need to update the books&mdash;especially not if the goal is merely to make them 'more accessible to the reader' (whatever that actually means)&mdash;but I also acknowledge that DD may want to set the earlier books in the same 'eternal present' as those currently published (see, e.g., this Out of Ambit post). I am far less concerned about the updates that will find their way into the movie, simply because it will already have been heavily revised by DD at this point in her career and at this point in time, so putting herself back in her '80s mindset, even if she could, would be counterproductive, and even, dare I say, slightly perverse. And of course, just as the books will always be available, no matter how any movie eventually turns out, the original editions will also always still be available, even if obtaining them may get more and more difficult as time progresses.

On the subject of updates, at one time DD appears to have considered making Fred a "mini-quasar or 'white hole,'" as evidenced by the old Concordance advertisements on this snapshot of the main YW.com page, courtesy of the Wayback Machine. This was doubtless inspired by the fact that white holes have fallen out of favour, now that there's a way to account for the tremendous luminosity of quasars using accretion onto a supermassive black hole (there had been attempts to explain the source of their power by positing that they were white holes), and the instabilities that affect white holes have come to light (er... sorry about the unintentional pun). However, this putative update creates all sorts of problems, mostly to do with the fact that "mini-quasar" refers either to a binary consisting of a (small) black hole and a star, or simply a smaller version of a standard quasar (where the accreted material still comes from a galaxy). They thus do not emit 'ex nihilo,' as do white holes&mdash;they do so via accretion onto the black hole, so all of Fred's non-electromagnetic emissions become veryConcordance (though the entry is admittedly still far from complete). (I do have to wonder whether his nickname is some sort of an hommage or allusion to the famous astrophysicist Fred Hoyle, particularly as he worked on models for quasars, albeit not using white holes&mdash;perhaps something to ask DD if the WizCasts ever start up again. Other people have suggested that it is a Dr. Who allusion [see, e.g., this topic], though I suppose that it could be both.)

Edited to correct an anomalous carriage return.

And edited again much later to insert a much-needed closing parenthesis and do some minor wordsmithing.

[kaiba4ever]

A SYWTBAW movie would be really awesome. I would definitely watch that. Especially if DD directs it. I also saw that tentative version of movie script, and now I'm so excited.

SYWTBAW would probably make a good movie because A) It's my favorite book and is awesome, and B) more reasonably, it involves teenagers + magic + crazy walking-on-air action, which are factors that seem make other books-turned-movie, like Harry Potter, so popular. But it's also very unique, and I'm not sure how that aspect would come across to people. Eragon, (used by DD as an example), in my opinion, felt as if it copied all sorts of clichés from other books, and it didn't have such a "unique" feel to it. SYWTBAW is special and "uniaue" however. The magic is different and I don't think anything quite like SYWTBAW has ever been done before, and because of this, people will be either attracted to SYWTBAW or find it odd. It's same with the books, really. One of my friends doesn't like Young Wizards series because it's so unusual, while one of my other friends (and me, of course) love it exactly for that reason.

Pierce Brosnan would make a superb Lone Power, in my humble opinion... Almost exactly how I imagined him, (handsome, dark, tall) except perhaps for hair color. He definitely fits what Nita described, at least in my mind. (I wonder how the other characters imagine him. Has it ever been mentioned, really?)... But it's still very amusing to think of LP being the same person as James Bond! XP

...Only problem is, if this becomes actuality, my childlike dreams of starring as Nita will be crushed, lol... ;_; But in the meantime we'd have a movie version of my favorite book, which would be great, so I probably wouldn't care anyway.