Remember when Atlas Shrugged, a big screen adaptation of Ayn Rand’s evil Objectivist novel, was going to star Angelina Jolie? How far that adaptation has come – it started shooting this weekend in Los Angeles with a cast that includes vets of such shows as One Tree Hill, Mercy and Ugly Betty.
The current version, being called Atlas Shrugged Part One feels like a placeholder movie to retain rights; the producers were going to lose their option if they didn’t have a movie in production by Saturday, so they got a movie into production by Saturday. The most famous version of this was when Roger Corman produced a version of Fantastic Four intended simply to retain the rights to the comic; that film was never meant to see the light of day.
So is Atlas Shrugged Part One meant to see the light of day? It’s hard to tell; producer John Aglialoro (the CEO of an exercise machine company!) says that there will be at least one more Atlas Shrugged shot after this. Rand’s book is huge, and cut into three parts, so it’s possible that Part One is really just the first part and not a wheel-spinning maneuver to keep the book rights.
For the full details, including which TV actors have been cast in which roles, click here.