BBC is making a Victorian-era War of the Worlds

[kawasaki]

Is this a Colonel? Not bothered.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ds-TV.html

Yeah, it's a Daily Fail link, bite me. See also the Verge.

[Hermit]

For a rag that has an ingrained hatred for the BBC, they certainly like to have a line on what they're producing. The Guardian must be chewing the carpet over it, because there's nothing on their site about it yet.

But considering that it's going to be made by the same people that made Strange & Norrell, it might actually be quite good

[Australian Dawn]

The Three part bit sends a shiver down my spine.
If they really think it's necessary to do it in three parts to tell the story properly then great, but if they are just planning on spinning it out into an epic length three part saga for the sake of it, or because it seems to have become the expected norm that genre adaptions come in threes, I fear they are going to kill any chance of this being a true classic, or worse maybe even make a complete dogs ear of it.
Here's hoping that won't be the case.

And I hope even more that they keep the aliens like they are described in the book and not turn them into some generic greys or some shit like that, as they did in the Tom Cruise movie.

[An Absent Humphrey]

Great stuff.
I did my MA dissertation on HG Wells.

I don't mind things being updated and played around with just so long as the updating and playing around with actually adds something and works. But when in doubt it's always good to keep to the original setting - I think modern audiences can handle that some things can be set in past times.
Spielberg's wretched attempt at WotW was woeful (as a version of the book), and so was Guy Ritchie's Holmes. But Luhrman's Romeo & Juliet was great.

[kawasaki]

I'll be happy if the producers and writers:

a) have actually read the novel
b) understand some of its themes
c) turn out a close approximation of same
d) don't turn it all into some dreadful apology for the Empire and its colonies
e) resist the temptation to use Jeff Wayne's fecking shite as background noise

[Bronshtein]

I'll be happy if the producers and writers:
e) resist the temptation to use Jeff Wayne's fecking shite as background noise

Oh God!
When are they planning on releasing it? It will be the 40th anniversary of that interminable dirge next year - I bet they can't resist 'the coincidence'.

(just read the article - 2018 - no way they're missing that double anniversary!)

[andrewb]

I'll be happy if the producers and writers:

a) have actually read the novel

Hang on that sounds like real research... I thought the new dumb it down charter banned anything other than Facebook or 'make it all up'.

[Bronshtein]

You liberal elitist swine you!

[Australian Dawn]

This work is in the public domain right?
So what's with the whole "it was difficult to get the rights from Paramount" BS?
This isn't even going to be a film but a TV series, so it's not even the same medium.

It's pretty ballsy to be comparing your as-yet-to-be-made TV series with Hollywood Blockbusters at all really, must be that British chutzpah the article mentions.

And I don't think this book was ever seen as "a revolutionary vision into the future" as this article claims, he did write books that were revolutionary visions into the future, but I don't think this re-write of The Battle of Dorking with ambulatory tentacled alien heads was one of them.
A great allegory for empire and a cautionary tale maybe, but I don't think anyone but some overreacting Yank half-wits who had never read the book were ever convinced of the impending threat of invasion from octopus vampires from Mars, but I suppose I could be wrong.

[sane max nli]

I'll be happy if the producers and writers:

a) have actually read the novel

hehehehe. If you are lucky they will watch the Tom Cruise movie, and make something similar with Penny-Farthing Bicycles and corsetry.

If you are very lucky they will get the people who did Downton to do it.

If you are exceedingly fortunate they will get Andrew Davies to do it, in which case the Martians will suddenly be quite attractive and the Narrator will end up marrying one of them.

and 'Themes'? why, you can expect the following themes

'Soldiers are helpless wee lambs and their officers stupid and evil'
'Racism is baaad m'kay?'
'Women are just as capable of being plucky fighters against oppression as men are'
'War (of the worlds) huh good god why'all, what is it good for (of the worlds) absolutely nuthin'
'Martians are humans too and just like us.'

As I once famously and much too loudly said at a family gathering. 'Alison, you MUST give me the recipe for this, so I don't make it by mistake!'