The last year has been a haze of ‘will he/won’t he’ stories connecting Steven Spielberg to projects that were all over the map; now it looks like he’s emerged from that period with a decision. His next movie will be War Horse, coming to theaters in 2011.
The film will be based on Michael Morpugo’s novel about WWI told from the point of view of a horse who experiences life on both sides of the trenches. Morpugo’s children’s book sees Joey, an English horse, getting sold to the army. In France he charges into battle but is captured by the Germans, who use him to pull an ambulance cart. Along the way he sees the horror and terror of World War I’s indiscriminate slaughter.
They didn’t make kid’s books like that when I was a kid.
I had heard that Spielberg was going crazy trying to come up with a film to rival Avatar, but I like the sound of War Horse for him much more. It reminds me of Empire of the Sun, which could be the director’s most underrated film.
The film has some heavyweights in the script department as well. Richard Curtis (Love, Actually) is teaming up with Lee Hall (a playwright who wrote the original Billy Elliot film) to adapt Morpugo’s novel, apparently using a stage adaptation of the same as ammunition.
14 comments
Will he digitally add Donald O'conner talking to the horse? No wait that was WWII and a mule.
"They didn't make kid's books like that when I was a kid." If you had pulled your misshapen head out of comic books and read a "kid's" book like Black Beauty, which in reality was a rather unsparing look at just how brutal the lives of most horses were in that time period, you might think differently.
First reaction: this sounds really interesting, unexpected, audacious, promising. Second reaction: this is not INTERSTELLAR, so it is disappointing nonetheless. Verification attempts: 11
It's like Au Hasard Balthazar but with a horse. Sorta.
I think this sounds like a great project for Spielberg. Comment #2 makes no sense at all. The horrors of World War 1 do not compare with the story told in 'Black Beauty'
I am actually looking forward to this due to the severe paucity of quality WWI films.
Verification attempts: 1 (including this one)
Era-of-war-seen-thru-the-eyes-of-an-animal is a familiar trope in children's books. It's a way of linking a lot of different character's stories and POVs without having to crowbar a human in as connective tissue. Could make for a very good or very dull movie though. Depends on which hat Spielberg is wearing when he makes it (Oscar Hat or Box Office Hat or Tired-So-Tired Hat).
Thank god he didn't get to remake Old Boy with Will Smith.
here's my theory on the verification fiasco: the 'system' generates only ONE code, no matter how many pages are checked/visited/seen.. so if 12 people clicks on this article to read it, all 12 get the same code — the first one to enter the code, 'wins' (get their msg posted) — the rest of the people's got to keep trying till they're the first ones to enter the only code generated.. try posting a comment in old articles that no one might be reading..
Spielberg is trying to come up with something that will rival fucking Avatar? That's like James Cameron going crazy trying to come up with something that rivals The Terminal. Avatar is a bad movie, and time will tell that tale. If Spielberg really thinks that that film is worth emulating in ANY capacity then the great genre filmmaker inside him truly is dead.
"War Horse" no. "War Whores" YES.
Avatar mentioned in the Warhorse Article lol. One would think he would have done something different. Other than another war movie. oh well. I guess the horse makes it different.
Maybe the horse has 6 legs…
Actually, it sounds an awful lot like Richard (WATERSHIP DOWN) Adams's novel TRAVELLER, which was the American Civil War seen from the point of view of Gen. Robert E. Lee's horse. I tried to read it once years ago, but the book struck me as unintentionally funny, as opposed to the presumably-intended harrowing. And by the way, anyone who has ever spent any time around horses is apt to think that seeing anything from their POV is a waste of time; they're beautiful, graceful creatures, but they're also among the stupidest animals you could ever encounter.
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