Academy Award-nominated director Paul Greengrass is preparing for a visit to Oceania. Deadline reports that The Bourne Supremacy and Captain Phillips helmer is set to direct a big screen adaptation of George Orwell’s iconic dystopic science fiction novel, 1984. Finding Neverland scribe James Graham is attached to provide the adapted screenplay.
Released in 1948, the novel tells of a future world wherein individuality and privacy are outlawed and citizens live in service to an all-seeing entity called “Big Brother.”
Orwell’s novel has been adapted twice before for the big screen. A 1956 version was released by Columbia Pictures, starring Edmond O’Brien, Michael Redgrave and Jan Sterling. Director Michael Anderson would later go on to explore some of the same themes in 1976’s Logan’s Run. Later, in the actual year 1984, Michael Radford helmed a big screen take on the novel with John Hurt, Richard Burton and Suzanna Hamilton starring.
Modern literary dystopias have proved fertile ground at the box office with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 expected to make a major debut this weekend. It’s likely no coincidence that the last time we heard about plans for a (now seemingly defunct) big screen take on Orwell’s tome was just before the first Hunger Games opened in 2012.
Before he directs 1984, Greengrass is expected to first return to The Bourne Identity franchise for a third film (the franchise’s fifth overall), bringing Matt Damon back to star.
Set up at Sony Pictures, the new take on 1984 will be produced by Scott Rudin and Gina Rosenblum.
