Hollywood is planning a new version of Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell's classic dystopian science-fiction novel which warned of the dangers of totalitarian government and spawned the term Big Brother.
Set in a world where three warring superstates battle each other eternally without any hope of victory, Orwell's 1949 novel has already had two big-screen adaptations. The 1956 version, starring Edmond O'Brien, Michael Redgrave and Jan Sterling, changed the storyline radically from the source material and is these days hard to find, as it was withdrawn from circulation by Orwell's estate following the expiry of a distribution agreement. The best-known version is Michael Radford's critically acclaimed 1984 retelling, starring John Hurt as everyman Winston Smith, the restless party worker who dares to dream of independent thought and possible romance. Richard Burton, in his final role, played the perfidious O'Brien, with Suzanna Hamilton as Julia, the object of Smith's doomed affections.
The new version is being put together by a consortium of Hollywood production companies including Imagine Entertainment, which is partly owned by Oscar-winning film-maker Ron Howard. Shepard Fairey, the street artist who produced the iconic Barack Obama "Hope" poster, was instrumental in bringing the project to the attention of the producers.
The consortium has secured rights from Orwell's estate and is currently searching for screenwriters, so the project is at an early stage. It's not known whether Howard himself is considering a director's role.
Nineteen Eighty-Four takes place entirely in the Oceania province of Airstrip One, formerly the United Kingdom, and while the new producers are firmly US-based there is nothing at this stage to suggest that they plan to relocate the action. The blockbuster success of films such as the Harry Potter series has proved beyond doubt that American audiences are no longer – if they ever were – put off by British accents.
As well as the two theatrical versions, Nineteen Eighty-Four has been a huge influence on cinema over the past half-century. Among the most notable are Terry Gilliam's flawed 1985 masterpiece Brazil, which takes many of its cues from Orwell's vision of a society governed by state-licensed mind control, and the 2006 comic-book adaptation V for Vendetta (based on Alan Moore's cult graphic novel), which also posits a British future under a fascist dictatorship. The latter has picked up something of a cult status in recent years after hackers' groups such as Anonymous adopted the iconic Guy Fawkes mask worn by vigilante V as a symbol of rebellion against tyranny.
