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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Hitchhikers Film

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nedrichards is confused

13:23 / 13.01.04

Well it looks like the Hitchikers film is going ahead with the beeb saying that the delightful martin freeman (Tim from 'The Office') will be Arthur Dent. the movies IMDB page will I'm sure be a place to follow.

Glad to see that something Adams worked for for so long (appaling sentence construction, sorry) looks like it is coming to pass though obvious sad he won't be around to see it.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

23:36 / 13.01.04

I'd always imagined Jack Davenport myself, if only because he can look suitably confused adquately. However - reading the book - I always imagined someone older.

Still, I think that Martin Freeman is an intriguing choice, and I certainly like him. I can see it working, and I hope he manages to showcase his talent. I'm hopeful of the results, for sure. I think this could be very good for him. I'm dying to see who they choose as Ford, because they do not have a certain air of cool about them, while managing to be very much not that. I love Ford.

I do have my doubts about the book working as a film at all - indeed, I think their only chance may be if they get me involved as only I know what Douglas' vision and humour truly entails. Oh wait - doesn't everyone who likes something to much think a little like that? I do actually think I had some great ideas for turning the book in to a movie - reading the book for the nth time - but I'm hopeful after this casting news.

Lets hope it makes it.

00:00 / 14.01.04

a certain air of cool about them, while managing to be very much not that.

Dexter Fletcher. For bug-eyed Brit cool/not cool otherworldliness, who could be better than Dexy?

Still, I’d be happier if they made a proper tv series out of it. It’s supposed to be a series. It works as a series. This urge to make boil down Hitchiker into a 1 ½ hour movie is money-chasing idiocy. The fools!

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

00:23 / 14.01.04

No, no, they can go by the new movie making blockbuster formula: trilogy! I'll have 12 hours, please. I think that might boil down quite nicely.

Dexter... I can almost see it, but just when I do, I see him presenting that series of Gamesmaster, and I cringe. Yeee!

17:54 / 14.01.04

Cinescape is reporting that Bill Nighy will play Slartibartfast.

Sounds good to me.

18:17 / 14.01.04

Freeman's a nicely leftfield choice (does anyone else think he looks like a young Christopher Guest?). I was expecting Hugh Laurie. I can't shake the feeling that this film will soar or suck on who's cast as Ford and Zaphod. Too OTT and it'll be horrendous. Not interesting enough and it'll be snoresome. My dream casting?
UK- No idea for Ford, Peter Serafinowicz as Zaphod
US- Owen Wilson as Ford and Oliver Platt as Zaphod.

Subject to change at any second when I think of better ideas.

nedrichards is confused

18:45 / 14.01.04

Owen Wilson *is* Ford Prefect. Also thinkJack Davenport could do a good-ish job at that although agreed that his confused would be great. other actors...I think kevin Spacey would do a great Ford but he's done the alien thing already and not too successfuly.

I think the success of the movie would rather depend on them not getting sucky sponsorship for the Guide. Not sponsored by Treo or anything silly like that. Also looking forward to purchasing many 'Don't Panic' tie-in towels.

19:51 / 14.01.04

Freeman will do nicely; he has the bemusement...

but Bill Nighy is pretty much perfect. I am now grinning from ear to ear. If you ever doubt this, just take Nighy in your mind and hear him say:

"Norway was one of mine. Won an award, did Norway"

and your mind should be made up. Ahehhehe.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

23:11 / 14.01.04

Owen Wilson as Ford gives me such excitement and thus extreme dissapointment as that will never ever happen!

13:59 / 29.01.04

More casting news.
So, Mos Def as Ford and Zooey Deschanel as Trillian. More leftfield casting. I've only seen Mos Def in one film, the underrated 'Where's Marlowe?', a sort of faux-documentary about a private detective being filmed by two film-school students, Def being one of them. He was pretty good. He was also in the Italian Job remake, but so was Seth Green...
Zooey Deschanel might make a good Trillian, based solely on her performance in Almost Famous. She's also younger than I expected, but that matches Martin Freeman as Arthur.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

14:31 / 29.01.04

Damn, I knew I'd forgotten something!

I'm not sure about either of these, but that's mostly because I've never really noticed them in anything - if I've seen them in anything at all.

Looking at Zooey's picture - I can't place her in anything at all, and I have seen Almost Famous - I think she seems quite fitting for Trillian. And with her name, she's practically there.

Not sure about Mos Def, if only because it ruins my notion of having Owen Wilson (seriously, isn't there something kinda alien about the way he talks? You know it makes sense!). I always imagined Ford to be a super pale, kind of scruffy but suave private eye looking guy, I dunno. It's just not fitting in my head, with how I imagine Ford to look. But then I've never seen Mos Def actually act. For some reason all I can picture in my head is him acting super goofy with an odd accent... but I think that's because I just imagine him talking in the kind of laid back drawl I'd expect of him.

I shall wait and see! Defintely some interesting casting going on here though.

07:31 / 05.02.04

This made me laugh when I read it: from the Cinefex magazine e-letter (check the female casting):

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Yahoo Movies reports that after years in development, Touchstone Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment will begin shooting this feature film adaptation of Douglas Adams' cult BBC radio show in England this April. Per Dark Horizons.com, Martin Freeman, from the British sitcom The Office, will be stepping into the role of Arthur Dent, the bewildered, pajamaed British earthling stranded after the demolition of his home planet. Rapper Mos Def will play galactic traveler Ford Prefect and Tricia McMillan will play hard-nosed space babe Trillian. Touchstone is planning a 2005 release.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:01 / 05.02.04

The casting of Mos Def actually makes me want to see this film more than anything else does...

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

09:34 / 05.02.04

But have you seen him act? And how can he handle a towel?

That's what I want to know!

No-one seems to have mentioned the director for this project, and apparently it's the duo "Hammer and Tongs" (sp?) who were behind Blur's "coffee and tv" video, probably among other things I don't really know about.

I read this on teletext.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:02 / 05.02.04

I've seen him in a few things, mostly TV work. He can act, although I've mostly seen him in serious roles (mind you, he can do comedy on record). It's been ages since I read the books, but isn't Ford's role mostly to be amusingly unfazed by intergalactic weirdness, and occasionally goof around? I think Mos can do that...

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

12:03 / 05.02.04

BEST NEWS SO FAR!!!

From empire.co.uk

"The Man with Two Heads
Sam Rockwell is President of the Galaxy

Sam Rockwell has joined the cast of Hitchhiker's as two headed Galactic President and former hippy Zaphrod Beeblebrox. Anyone familiar with Rockwell's fabulous, twitchy performances in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Galaxy Quest will realise that he is ideal for the part. "

Oh yes! This news has me more excited than any of the others.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

12:05 / 05.02.04

That's encouraging too Fly. I do like Mos, he just didn't gel with the visual of Ford I had in mind. I'm seeing it more and more now, though.

This seems like it could be rather good, at this rate...

12:08 / 03.03.04

How could I miss the news of Rockwell's casting? I'm happy as two pigs in a satchel. Drunk pigs. A comfortable, warm satchel.

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:16 / 03.03.04

Yeah, after seeing Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind I reckon Rockwell is perfect for Zaphod. And many other things, such as my biopic.

nedrichards is confused

15:45 / 03.03.04

Totally OT but I would have loved to have seen Rockwell in The Nicolas Cage role in Adaptation.

As for the film I'm jsut counting the seconds till I can buy a branded towel from asseenonscreen.

15:55 / 03.03.04

The casting's so good, it has me sipping wishing well water imported from Pluto...

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

23:05 / 25.05.04

Website.

Cast and crew pic.

Prototype Marvin, and a video of some Marvin costume testing.

Can someone retitle this thread so it's spelt properly, and thus easier to find?

XXII:X:II = XXX

07:39 / 28.05.04

"Here I am, brain the size of a planet..."

I wonder how they're going to portray how old he is if there's more than one film in this series. Eventually his leg has to be carried off, he gets shot into the sun, he waits around on Magrathea for a few hundred million years, etc. I wonder who'll do his voice. My vote's for Stephen Wright.

/+,

11:24 / 28.05.04

Marvin can only be Stephen Moore, sadly. I'm listening to the original radio series again at the moment. And it just doesn't work any other way. I love their model - I always imagined Marvin as being longer, spindlier, and with more of a hunched spine, but the slightly childish body combined with a head sagging not just because he's "very depressed, you know" but also because it's too heavy for his motors is just lovely.

13:04 / 28.05.04

Marvin looks a bit like T.O.M., the mascot for Cartoon Network's Toonami.

A definite anime/superdeformed influence, anyway.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

13:34 / 28.05.04

Definitely! I was a little startled by the design at first, actually. I don't know why, I'd always imagined Marvin as your typical steel, buttons on chest, old school clunky (an old school robot? wow) type of robot. Which, I suddenly realised when looking at this, isn't how he was described in the books at all...

Depressed stormtrooper, right? I don't have the book to hand.

But it's very cute, and very small! I think this is a good selling point for the film, toys, merchandise, kids wanting the cute robot... well, maybe. Nicely surprised, I think. Really quite hopeful for this film...

Anyone hear of the "new" character, that Douglas wrote in to his own scripts, apparently for John Malkovich to play?

XXII:X:II = XXX

04:42 / 30.05.04

T.O.M. doesn't quite look like that anymore. On more recent bumpers, he's filled out some and looks a bit more like Samus from "Metroid." If it weren't Disney making the HGTTG flick I'd say the redesign was done to avoid confusion. Seeing as it IS Disney, maybe they ripped off the design.

/+,

19:04 / 26.07.04

from Cinescape.com:

We've just received word that the teaser trailer for THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY was shown moments ago at the Pixar panel held at the San Diego Comic Convention. Running between 30 to 60 seconds long, here's how our correspondent described the imagery shown to the audience:

The teaser opens with a tracking shot of the Earth from orbit, like you're flying backwards. Louie Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" song plays over the images.

Suddenly the Earth blows up. Then the shot freezes in mid-explosion.

The words "Don't Panic" appear onscreen.

The explosion of the Earth then continues on, resuming back to normal speed. Debris of the planet fly everywhere. The camera zips through the starscape.

Then the words "The end of the world is just the beginning" appear onscreen.

The starfield resolves itself into a stylized hitchhiker hand.

The teaser ends with the words THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY - Don't leave Earth without it - 2005.

The THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY movie is scheduled to open June 3, 2005.

[Big props to David Wharton for being an eyewitness to the event.]

Whisky Priestess

19:25 / 26.07.04

Cuh. No. Call me a big Marvin but Mos Def as Ford does not do it for me, and neither does the cutey-babybot Marvin (in a less extreme way).

For a start, Def is clearly far too cool to be a proper Ford. Ford is only ever just about holding it together, and has to defer to Zaphod in cool terms as soon as Zaphod appears. How about Crispin Glover, and not just because I want to cast him in everything?

As for Marvin, I love his big featureless head but Marvin needs to be more spindly and awkward, like an overgrown, ill-nourished metal pot plant. He needs to be spiky and a bit knackered, not CGI-smooth. The toy of Marvin should be slightly dangerous, the sort of thing you can't give to under-3s because they'll swallow bits.

Above all, they must all be English! (Except Zaphod.) And they must NOT be Disney hirelings.

Oh, I'm just an old traditionalist casting bigot. You will find me in the corner with my towel wrapped round my head, sulking.

19:57 / 26.07.04

I always pictured Ford Prefect as looking a bit like Brad Dourif, the guy who played Piter deVries in Dune (1984 version). Minus the sappho-stained lips of course. So no, Mos Def doesn't work for me. That Marvin is...interesting. Mainly because I can see it falling apart over the course of the film to finally resemble something like what Whiskey Priestess described.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

20:30 / 26.07.04

But Sam Rockwell = BEST CASTING EVARRRR

08:19 / 28.07.04

'Anyone hear of the "new" character, that Douglas wrote in to his own scripts, apparently for John Malkovich to play?'

This is from Martin Freemans site...

'John Malkovich (being Humma Kavula)
Martin will be working with the legendary John Malkovich who will be playing Humma Kavula.
Okay, so you don't recall that character in the books, but it was created by Douglas Adams specially for the film adaptation. The character is something to do with the Great Green Arklesiezure story, and the description of his physical appearance sounds incredible - Malkovitch will fit the character like a glove. (I could describe it to you, but then I'd have to kill you.)'

19:04 / 15.12.04

Ooh, oooh! look, pictures! Real pictures, from a real film!

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

20:37 / 15.12.04

ooooooooooooooooooooooooh!

Brigade du jour

21:43 / 15.12.04

Excuse my geekdom, but ... can I assume they're going to CGI the fake head on to Sam Rockwell's shoulder?

Or maybe do without it altogether? Maybe he could simply suggest the extra head through the power of his acting. Aww, I almost miss the big fake rubber head the guy had in the TV series that looked like Mick Mars from Motley Crue.

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