This may be the oddest mix of director and material that you might read all year. According to Variety, Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) will be directing an adaptation of Herman Melville's Moby Dick for Universal, who made a big pre-emptive buy of this revisionist take. Not surprisingly, it won't be the "Call me Ishmael" version that you remember from school. In fact, Ishmael probably won't even be in it.

Adam Cooper and Ben Collage are penning the screenplay, and taking what they call "a graphic novel approach" to a book considered to be one of the best in the English language. (In Hollywood talk nowadays, this means "It will look like 300.") Moby Dick becomes a kind of Jaws in this version, where we will see him wreaking havoc on the seas long before he encounters Captain Ahab and the Pequod. Ahab won't become the obsessive and destructive captain, but a brave and charismatic leader. (Yeah, there was a moral there, but who needs that nowadays?) Bekmambetov is looking to apply his frenetic visual flair to the story of the great white whale. I think we all know what the style is, and what this will look like. Moby's white body will look terrific splattered with blood as he drags ships down to the depths at high speed.

Honestly, Moby Dick is not one of my favorite books, and it's only an academic snarkiness that balks at a Bekmambetov version. Besides, it's going to be pretty funny when audience members rush to Borders to buy a copy of the book, imagining it to be packed with gore and brawny heroes, not "to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee!"

After the record-breaking success of Night Watch and Day Watch (and an early film for B-movie maven Roger Corman, Arena), Khazakstan-born, Russia-based director Timur Bekmambetov makes his English-language big-studio debut with Wanted, a bruising, brawny action film starring James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie. Bekmambetov spoke with Cinematical in Los Angeles about making the jump to big-money moviemaking, the hidden world of secrets behind Wanted's look, the action-film apprenticeship of James McAvoy, working with Angelina Jolie and how " .... we (film makers) are all vampires. ..."

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In Wanted, rapper-actor Common plays The Gunsmith -- a cool, deadly expert marksman who mostly lets his bullets do the talking. But meeting with Cinematical in Los Angeles, the veteran of films like Smokin' Aces and Street Kings is warm and obviously enthusiastic about his experiences, talking about everything from his preparation process for playing what he calls "a Samurai warrior" in Wanted to the challenges facing African-American actors -- plus what's good to drink in Prague and how holding a real gun to James McAvoy's head can get you in the moment for your scenes.

Cinematical's podcast content is now available through iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

The flashy advertisements, the curving of bullets and Angelina Jolie make it pretty difficult to remember that Wanted was originally based on a series of graphic novels by Mark Millar. From early reports (including a review from Cinematical), the adaptation is a loose one, so you might be surprised to hear that Millar actually felt it was an improvement on his work.

He posted his enthusiastic response on his official message board. (If you choose to click, be warned, the place abounds with spoilers.) "Even the biggest change -- the loom stuff in the middle Timur wrote -- works really well. I think the fate thing really made the character more empathetic as the 'killing for fun' stuff would have made him a little hateful. They kept all the best bits and junked my over-indulgences. So I feel very happy as it was a kind of perfected version that made it to the screen. Could not be happier."

Millar also added that he's been approached by Universal about concocting a sequel. "They've asked me how I can develop some of the other stuff from the book into the sequel. We'll see what box office is like at the weekend, but everyone knows this is going to make a LOT of dough. Wall·E permitting." (He actually has a few choice words for the hapless robot, who really shouldn't be held accountable for his release date.)

When Wanted was announced as the opening night film for the Los Angeles Film Festival, there was a mild outbreak of head-scratching over the choice; why start a film festival loaded with independent and foreign film with a big-studio action movie? The fact is that the opening-night LAFF premiere of Wanted -- directed by a Kazakh director who made his name in Russia, loosely based on a series of comics by a Glasgwegian Scot, starring America's most notable movie starlet opposite a Glasgow-born lead actor and shot with Prague standing in for Chicago -- doesn't say much about the LAFF as a film festival and doesn't say a single thing about L.A. as a real city, but it says plenty about L.A. as a company town with a global span. Wanted's a corporate product, but, thankfully, it's an excellent one -- the two-fisted, double-barreled high-octane guilty pleasure summer action movie you've been waiting for. Wanted is speedy and spiffy and shiny as a bullet, and it's got about as much actual weight when it stops moving.

For a few weeks now, a grainy video has been circling the Internet of an office worker going absolutely insane. It originated on Break.com, and I've included it after the jump for your critical enjoyment.

Those fearing that their cubicle neighbor might engage in similar hysterics can breathe easy -- it was all a sly bit of viral marketing from Timur Bekmambetov for Wanted. He revealed the stunt over on his personal blog, where he allegedly had a good laugh at the gullibility of the West. I'm not seeing any geographic mockery here, so quite possibly he took that down.

Any fans of the Russian Watch (Dozor) franchise out there? Anyone? Drat. Smash hits in their home country, Night Watch and Day Watch have barely blipped on the U.S. box-office radar, with the second film failing to crack $500 grand stateside. Their failure to catch on isn't really surprising -- we like fantasy, but maybe not fantasy this goofy, surreal, and (sometimes) downright abstract. And the movies are really more about Russia than an epic battle between the forces of light and dark, anyhow.

But the series is making a killing at home, as I say (Day Watch's $34 million take is a Russian record), and director Timur Bekmambetov was presumably hired to direct this summer's very American Wanted on the strength of the Watch films. Having finished frolicking with Angelina Jolie, he's finally revving up the third film in the series. The American title was previously thought to be Twilight Watch, which is what the Sergei Lukyanenko novel is called here, but according to this Screen Daily story, Fox International is going with the snappier Dusk Watch. Bekmambetov is already in preproduction on the film.

I think the movies are confusing, occasionally annoying (The Chalk of Fate? Seriously?), and weird enough to be really interesting. If the plot description (supernatural "Others" representing either the forces of light or the forces of dark hide among us, bound by a centuries-old truce that's about to be broken) sounds interesting to you, they're worth checking out, at least as curiosities.

[hat tip: Aint It Cool News]

I guess whether we like it or not, viral campaigns are hot, hip and here to stay. Universal pictures has launched the viral site for Timur Bekmambetov's Wanted, and it all revolves around a shadowy group known as the Fraternity of Weavers. Now for the tricky part: to crack the code on the website you must enter five secret words to earn a peek at the handbook for the fraternity -- plus you get a little bit more info behind Angelina's bad-ass hand tattoo. So if you're the kind of person who likes puzzles, then feel free to figure it out on your own. But, if you're like me and a little impatient, you can click over to Coming Soon and they have the solution -- I won't spoil it here.

Wanted is based on Mark Millar's graphic novel about an everyday schmo (as played by James McAvoy) who turns out to be the heir to a secret society of assassins. Angelina Jolie stars as Fox, the second in command and mentor to McAvoy. Morgan Freeman plays the elder statesman and co-founder of the group, while hip-hop artist Common stars as the weapons expert, The Gunsmith.

The viral site provides plenty of background info on the history of the ancient fraternity, but for the most part it's a bunch of spiritual mumbo-jumbo about fate, destiny, the Cathars, and ancient weaving cults -- oh, and plenty of Wikipedia links. There's also a sign up page if you're interested in becoming a member of the fraternity (hazing optional?). One imagines more viral goodies will most likely show up at some point before Wanted opens in theaters on June 27th.