‘The Illustrated Man’ gets Cinematic!

So, this is pretty awesome news for the real sci-fi geeks out there, especially if you a fan of Ray Bradbury. As one of the true masters of the literary genre, Bradbury’s work is great material for movies and now his ‘Illustrated Man’ may be getting fast-tracked.

OK, so this isn’t the first motion picture adaptation made of ‘Illustrated Man’. The first film version was made in 1969 starring Rod Steiger and directed by Jack Smight. This new adaptation in development is written by Alex Tse, who worked with Zack Snyder on ‘Watchmen’. Oh, yeah… this may very likely be one of Snyder’s next big projects. He’s attached to direct, but it’s still unclear if he’ll direct the entire film of just one of the six parts that make up the film.

To better understand what ‘Illustrated Man’ is about (for those who aren’t familiar) here’s a synopsis:

THE ILLUSTRATED MAN is classic Bradbury –a collection of tales that breathe and move, animated by sharp, intaken breath and flexing muscle. Here are eighteen startling visions of humankind’s destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin–visions as keen as the tattooist’s needle and as colorful as the inks that indelibly stain the body.

The images, ideas, sounds and scents that abound in this phantasmagoric sideshow are provocative and powerful: the mournful cries of celestial travelers cast out cruelly into a vast, empty space of stars and blackness … the sight of gray dust settling over a forgotten outpost on a road that leads nowhere … the pungent odor of Jupiter on a returning father’s clothing. Here living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, Martian invasions are foiled by the good life and the glad hand, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets.

Ray Bradbury’s THE ILLUSTRATED MAN is a kaleidoscopic blending of magic, imagination, and truth, widely believed to be one of the Grandmaster’s premier accomplishments: as exhilarating as interplanetary travel, as maddening as a walk in a million-year rain, and as comforting as simple, familiar rituals on the last night of the world. — RayBradbury.com

Frosty from Collider.com got an opportunity to speak with Alex Tse about the project and found out that the film will be made up of six stories from the book. Tse spilled some beans and revealed three of the six stories chosen, including: Illustrated Man, Veldt, and Concrete Mixer.

As much as I think Zack Snyder would do a great job with this film, I’d love to see him just direct one of the stories and then produce the whole film. I love it when these kinds of anthology movies get made and they feature a different director for each story/short, giving a selection of interesting and varied points of view centered on some sort of central theme… in this case, sci-fi stories from a single collection by Bradbury. Tse also mentioned that they are currently offering roles to potential casting choices.

[source: Collider.com]