‘Wanted’ Director Hunts Moby Dick

Published by Jeff Leins on September 24, 2008

Universal Pictures has acquired a graphic novel re-imagining of Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick for Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov.

According to the trades, the studio paid “high six figures” for a screenplay by Adam Cooper and Bill Collage.  It seems like a high price to pay the guys whose filmography consists of only two movies, starting with the Olsen twins’ New York Minute.

They plan on doing an original take on it, borrowing the cliche phrase “this isn’t your grandfather’s” Moby Dick to explain their new vision.  Basically the new take consists of using the new green screen technology utilized by Sin City and 300 to retell an old classic. (You can read more about that influential technique here.)

Instead of telling the revenge story from the perspective of Ishmael, it will add backstory of Moby Dick’s oceanic destruction and paint Ahab as more of “a charismatic leader than a brooding obsessive.”  Get me George Clooney?

So let’s recap, the guys who wrote an Olsen twins movie think it’s a good idea to change the story for one of the greatest pieces of literature in history.  Meanwhile, Bekmambetov will make a new Jaws with his own “visual flair,” just like he watered down The Matrix with Wanted.

There have been about six film adaptations already of Moby Dick, including Orson Welles’s last released movie 14 years after he died.  But this one sounds the most ridiculous.  Thar she blows indeed.