Poor Eragon

Jeez, that film got dreadfully spanked in the reviews.

This is something of an issue for me, as one fantasy film's bad fortune affects all other potential fantasy pitches far more than the previous few films' good fortune will;  and in a household where pitching fantasy film is something that's more likely to happen pretty soon than not, we both keep an eye on such things.

I get a sense that something's gone wrong in the process between the book and the screenplay. (I haven't read the book, and so can't judge the problem from that side.) I will say this, though:  I read the original Eragon screenplay a couple/few weeks ago, and got very concerned. For one thing, the spacing on the screenplay had been badly "cheated" (meaning each page had many more lines on it than it should have). This may not sound like much, but in an industry where the timing of a movie can be definitively judged by the (correct) spacing and pagination of a script, that's a problem... and possibly indicative of more trouble to come.

And I may have been right about that concern, since it now turns out that there are three additional writers' names on the movie. This suggests that the producers felt there was either structural trouble, or dialogue trouble, or both, after the first draft. Some of the reviews would seem to come down on the "dialogue trouble" side, though. (I'm not going to link to them individually: reading them gives me the ouchies as it is, however deserved they may be. Hit that link above and you'll see a lot of reviews using truly scalding language [and terrible puns] to slag the film off.)

...So now -- around here, anyway -- we'll  be rooting for the next fantasy film out of the chute to do better, and change the mood.

A note in passing: another of the screenplays that came through here in that last batch was by the wonderful Tom Stoppard. And I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that his script was the only one in the batch that did not cheat on the spacing. My feeling after reading it was that, if there are not too many changes between his draft and the shooting script, The Golden Compass is going to work quite well. (Again, I haven't read the book: so I'm coming to the subject as someone who knows nothing in particular about that universe, and therefore comes to the property as most of the film's viewers will.)

(sigh) Back to work...

Update: Deadline Hollywood Daily reports:

Also strong [on Friday] was the Harry Potter clone Eragon which took 2nd place with $8.6 mil Friday and may score a $24.5 mil weekend.

That would be a solid enough figure for the one day, if not spectacular. But this film had a fairly large budget (estimates seem to be around $100 million) and will have to do well over the weekend and the next couple/few weeks to make an impression. (Received wisdom has it that a film must make from four to five times its budget to "earn out".)

How did *this* one slip under the radar? Judith Regan "terminated" from HarperCollins

But then the statement was made "late Friday", when everybody was probably at a Christmas party somewhere. (Or NewsCorp hoped they were.) (Sorry, the only link I have at the moment is to a registrant-only story at Variety.)

News Corp.-owned HarperCollins announced the news late Friday on the East Coast with a terse press release headlined "Judith Regan Terminated." Termination was effective immediately, the statement said.

Move was clearly a reaction -- albeit a delayed one -- to the embarrassing scandal involving a Regan tome and T.V. special with O.J. Simpson titled "If I Did It," in which he described the way he would have committed the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. That event earned across-the-board condemnation and a statement from Murdoch, who called the event "ill-considered" and yanked both the book and special.

...Over the last few weeks, Harper topper Jane Friedman came under fire for her silence about the Regan incident, and it seemed no accident that the statement declared that it was Friedman who was announcing the termination.

Regan has apparently moved herself and her staff to LA in hopes of working on some TV production deals, but, Variety says, "few had yet to materialize."

(Thanks to all who suggested alternate links.)

Update: The details continue to trickle out...

...her firing swiftly followed a Friday afternoon phone call from her Los Angeles office to a HarperCollins attorney that included comments that were characterized as offensive, two highly placed corporate sources said Saturday.

HarperCollins announced Saturday that Cal Morgan, her longtime editorial director, would take over the leadership of her division, which recently moved its offices from New York to Century City.

The company "will continue operations under the able leadership of Editorial Director Cal Morgan, reporting to Michael Morrison, president and group publisher of Harper/Morrow," according to a statement issued by Jane Friedman, HarperCollins CEO and president

A little more about "the Hero's Journey"

It's also called "the Monomyth". There's a good breakdown of its basics on Wikipedia. (NB: apparently some of the citations on the Wikipedia article are being checked for accuracy.)

The Monomyth is having something of a "vogue period" at the moment. In screen writing, in particular, you will find people who are desperate to try to shove your screenplay into this model and make it fit, whether it belongs in there or not. (eyeroll)