Wednesday 30 May 2012

ALTERED CARBON film rights re-optioned

This is slightly older news (from February) but something that had managed to slip past my radar. Mythology Entertainment, a newly-formed production company, has secured the movie rights to Altered Carbon, Richard Morgan's debut novel and the first featuring his body-hopping protagonist Takeshi Kovacs. The deal also includes the book's two sequels, Woken Furies and Broken Angels, though presumably not his 'fantasy' trilogy which is set in the distant future of the same setting.



The book was originally optioned by Matrix producer Joel Silver shortly after the novel was published, allowing Morgan to become a full-time writer after completing only just one book. This attempt to make a film came to nothing. A second attempt during the 2008 Writer's Guild of America Strike (when the studios were looking at using completed-but-unmade scripts to put into production to get around the lack of new scripts being written) also came to nothing.

Laeta Kalogridis, the executive producer of Avatar and scriptwriter of Shutter Island, will co-pen the script along with David Goodman. Interesting to see if this gets made or languishes in development hell for several years. I am particularly interested to see how they handle the problem of the film requiring several actors to play the hero (as Kovacs is 're-sleeved' several times in different bodies).

10 comments:

Ted Cross said...

Hey, I'd love to play one of those sleeves! If they film in Hungary, like so many other films these days, I hope they'll consider me.

Tommy said...

Where was it revealed that the Ringil books are in the future of the Kovacs books?

Adam Whitehead said...

THE STEEL REMAINS throws out some pretty big hints, but THE COLD COMMANDS confirms it beyond any doubt. Ringil even keeps having conversations with an ascended Kovacs.

Anonymous said...

RE: Ringil

Wait, what? I must be terrible at reading because I missed this.

polishgenius said...

I reckon you've dropped a bit of a minor spoiler there, regarding the Ringil thing (it's waaay fun working it out for oneself)...

But since kingofthenerds asks: read with particular attention any lengthy interaction with a particularly old being, especially in book 2.

El Commutador said...

Eh! I plan to read that 2nd book soon, so I'll keep my attention on that Ringil / Kovacs thing :-)

El Commutador said...

Will keep an eye en that Ringil/ Kovacs thing, when I read that 2nd book in TSR series.

Interesting post & comments!

Daniel C Howard said...

Morgan ties all of his books together brilliantly... All the Takeshi Kovacs novels (obviously). The fantasy series takes it WAAAAY into the future. Thirteen is pre-Martian discovery. And even Market Forces (which may or may not be a near-future version of the setting) refers to a "far-fetched" novel the protagonist reads in jail that bears striking similarity to Altered Carbon.

Can you tell I'm a fan?

Anonymous said...

I nominate Guy Pearce as Kovacs. he was hilarious but gritty in Lockout.

Adam Whitehead said...

Actually, BLACK MAN (the original name for THIRTEEN) is not set in the AC universe. Morgan actually said it might have been a good idea, but the setting will develop in a different way in future books: he has said he has more books in the BLACK MAN universe - not necessarily involving the same characters - planned for after his fantasy work.