There's a film version of Susan Cooper's "The Dark Is Rising" coming out this autumn.

The director is a no-name, but the script is by Danny Hodge, who wrote Trainspotting and Shallow Grave. That could mean that movie doesn't suck.

Er, John Hodge.

Bloody hell!

(I am filled with "bah, I bet they ruin them" feelings. It looks to be getting released about the same time as The Golden Compass, too)

i love these fucking books but the guy who's directing it is the genius behind "the path to 9/11." barf.

http://walford.smugmug.com/photos/153497052-M.jpg

Christopher Eccleston plays the dark hunter guy in it. I trust they'll add some CGI there, because he doesn't look particularly scary...

I can't find any info on how many films they're goign to make. It's understandable that they've skipped the first book, because not much happens in it, but surely they aren't going to squeeze the whole thing into one film?

no. and i posted this in noise:

okay, i saw a bit of script from dark is rising and ... it's not bad. it was just f/x markup stuff from the first act, and not totally indicative of the script-as-whole. but it seems the project's being rushed through production (for a september/october release?) and, given the dumbfuckery of walden media w/r/t both chronicles of narnia and bridge to terebithia i'm not sure i trust them to do homage to cooper's book. i mean, the whole celtic thing is being altered and the stanton family has turned american. the family-dynamic stuff has been elevated from elegant background to near-foreground and the adventury-survivaly theme has been cranked maximally. still, ian macshane as merriman is great casting, and the kid looks suitable if - yeah -€“ american, so who knows what'll happen?

No noononon wait, they CAN'T BE FUCKING AMERICAN WHAT THE

;_____________;

At least it's not as bad as adding a completely new American character in the movie, as they did in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, because obviously no American relate to a Briton.

I have to say though that casting the humans in LotR as American when everyone was British was a brilliant idea.

I have to say though that casting the humans in LotR as American when everyone was British was a brilliant idea.

o_0

Well, I think the difference between elves and humans is made wonderfully clear if the former are American and the latter British.

Sorry, the other way around.

And Hobbits are supposed to be English countrysiders, right?

There is at least one new character in the IMDB cast listing.

Americanisation = rub, though - the original books have a *very* strong sense of place, very deep-rooted. Incidentally, I only found out recently that the ship The Lottery, whose ghost appears in the third book, was a real ship, and the story of what happened to it a true story.

"Survival of the family", though, is pretty important at a few places in The Dark Is Rising itself, with Will having to protect his siblings from the Dark at least twice, from what I remember.

Consider the elves as the stereotypical image of the British Empire around the time LotR was written: a bit pompous and aristocratic, restrained, old rulers of the earth who's time is fading and who tend to live in past glories. Whereas humans are like the stereotypical America: rash and arrogant but energetic, the new rulers who'll inherit the earth.

<I>i mean, the whole celtic thing is being altered and the stanton family has turned american.</i>

Seriously? What the fuck? I think half the reason I and my friends liked these books as a kid was partially down to acute Anglophilia. I'm sure that's true of many Americans who read the books in childhood. This really seems like one of those things that the people who try to make money off these books when making them into movies fail to realize. Half the thrill of those kinds of fantasy novels was the sense of foreignness, of cultures half-misunderstood and ultimately vaguely unfamiliar.

haha if they do the other books what will replace wales?

Canada?

ACTORS I NEVER KNEW WERE BRITISH (a list):

Elijah Wood
Sean Astin
Liv Tyler
Cate Blanchett
Hugo Weaving

I liked this series. It also introduced me to the strange world of Welsh people, if I remember correctly! We read one of them in some reading class I had (in middle school, I think) and I just remember the teacher being pretty cool. Good times.

the grey king is from banff? the drowned hundred is under lake louise?

the stantons are american -- but the story is still set in basically the same place. a lot of the creepiness is over-visualized; there's a lot of omigod the unsubtle eye of fucking mordor shit in the script that (at least to my reading of the book) was better as vague suggestion and looming mood. it's like how peter jackson read tolkein saying 'magic should not be visible' and then having that weird break-dancing wizard fight in the lord of the rings movie, instead of interpreting 'visible' as 'inherent' in all things.

the strongest image i have of 'dark is rising' is of the night before will turns thirteen, when he wakes up and there's a warm wind blowing & birds flapping about and this vague, inspecific ill-ease. it's just ... creepy. quiet and unhurried and kind of a lovecraft horror vibe. what i really fear about the film is that this kind of eerie, dim, quietness will be overdone with wind f/x and slanty cameras and POV predator shots.

The Stantons still shouldn't be American, but the Drews could be. If they wanted. They're on holiday, anyway.

I guess they aren't in most of the books, just Over Sea and the Greenwitch.

Wait, and Silver on the Tree, too. But not The Dark is Rising.

I love these books v much.

I love Susan Cooper, period.

I loved these books as a child (they were about the only books I read over and over again, which I didn't much do because there were always so many other books to discover) and can't imagine a film doing them justice. Having said that, I did look at them on my shelf recently and wonder if kids today still read them in a world of Harry Potters and so on, so I hope it gets children interested.

Then again I had no idea that so many other people (and, to be honest, so many Americans) would be on this thread, so I must have been underestimating the books' popularity. My aunt gave me her copies because she'd loved them but none of my friends knew of them or read them even after my enthusiastic recommendations.

I've not read any other Susan Cooper. Any recommendations?

I remember liking Seaward quite a lot as kid too. It's a rather idiosyncratic and moody fantasy book, not much to do with LotR type of high fantasy rather than the characters' inner psychology. But it's been 15 years since I read, so I don't remember much.

This thread has inspired me to reread these books, maybe I'll go to the library tomorrow and borrow some of them.

I like her book of essays on kids' lit very much, it's called Dreams and Wishes but no, it's not really like her YA fic. Seaward is probably the next wisest/most substantial of the books I've read. I did hit The Boggart and The Boggart and the Monster but I think both are just light reading and not esp life-changing. (Lovely Trina Schart Hyman jacket art, though.)

Wd like to read Green Boy, King of Shadows, and her new one called Victory.

According to Wikipedia there was an eight year gap between Over Sea, Under Stone and The Dark Is Rising, I didn't know that. That would explain why the first book is so much lighter in tone, maybe she didn't even think of writing sequels to it then.

I really loved "The Dark is Rising" as a kid (I don't think I liked the other ones in the series as much), but I haven't read it in a long time. If it still takes place in Britain the family's nationality doesn't matter that much, but it's still a dumb decision. I don't know why people think it's necessary to do shit like that; you'd think that Harry Potter and the Golden Compass would have proven that American kids don't have trouble relating to Britishes characters.

Remy I think I wrote about that scene for a middle school assignment.

According to the reviews the film scraps all the parts that made the books unique and interesting, and makes it into your typical kiddie fantasy. I'm not sure if I even want to see it now.

I have a tendency to get annoyed when people who say 'The film isn't anything like the book!!!' as a criticism - I know you might love the book, but they are two different things after all.

However, after watching the trailer for this film and having no idea that it was 'The Dark is Rising' until the name came up at the end, I must ask what the point was of so loosely adapting the books rather than writing a new, unique fantasy film? Is it really just to use the name, because (children's) fantasy film adaptions have been succesful recently?

I have no desire to watch this.

it isn't anything like the book

it's shit

I just watched it. Absolutely horrible. I honestly can't remember the books other than the feeling that they created a wonderfully rich world, which is exactly what the film lacked. Anyone who criticized LOTR should be made to watch this film several times over