Warner Bros Sails With 'Odysseus'
Filed under: Action, Classics, Deals, Warner Brothers, Scripts, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand, Remakes and Sequels, War
Those of us who suffered through Warner Bros' Troy were always kind of hoping they'd reward us by making the obvious sequel of The Odyssey. Now they are. Variety reports that the studio has nabbed "Odysseus," a spec script by Ann Peacock, and has assigned Jonathan Liebesman to direct. Here I should stress that it's not officially a sequel to Troy but it might as well be, since it will follow that "real world" vision they set up with their earlier Homer rewrite. The movie won't be the tale of Odysseus' really lousy trip home from the Trojan War, but what happens when he finally gets back to his kingdom of Ithaca which he "finds under the brutal occupation of an invading force." Now this is true to the poem in that Odysseus finds all those wannabe husbands eating him out of house and home, and Penelope trying her best to fend them off. But they're not an invading force, they're local boys having a lot of fun, and their families don't take kindly to Odysseus slaughtering them all. War nearly breaks out between Odysseus and all of Ithaca until Athena intervenes, and forces them to make peace.
So yeah, there's a movie there, and the Muse will always start where she will. But it wouldn't be nearly as much fun as the Cyclops, the Sirens, Circe turning men into pigs (ha ha!), the Underworld, faithful Penelope and manwhore Odysseus (so good in bed that Calypso refuses to release him for years). I'm enough of a classics nerd that I could sit through a whole Odyssey trilogy if Warner Bros would just make the whole sprawling saga. I know I'm not alone in that. Still, if this is the version they're going to go with, could we at least have Sean Bean reprise the role?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-27-2009 @ 7:09PM
vegimorph said...
what about the odyssey in spice kind of thing with Brad Pitt? does anybody know how that's going?
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4-28-2009 @ 11:15AM
Kevin said...
I agree with everything you said Elisabeth. I couldn't stand Troy because of how the destroyed the source material. I'll never understand how a studio exec could say "Hey, you know that story thats been floating around for thousands of years because of how unbelievably awesome it is? I'll bet I can improve it". They should've just let it be, been faithful to it, and made one helluva sci-fi, classical, sword and sandals movie. They should do the same with the odyssey, but since you know they'll mess it up the very least they can do is keep Bean as the star. If they do that then at least his performance will have a chance of salvaging the film.
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4-28-2009 @ 2:35PM
John R said...
Well. I didn't mind Troy too much. I guess Bean may have helped in that regard. It would be FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC if Bean reprised the role.
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4-28-2009 @ 3:49PM
Sandra said...
Sean Bean was the best thing in Troy (followed closely by Eric Bana as Hector [Brad Pitt did far too much posturing for me]). I suppose it would be too much to hope that, in casting this movie, the powers that be might recognize this. Bean really should play the role.
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