Movie Monday: Atlas Shrugged Part II Filming in April
February 6th, 2012
Atlas Shrugged film fans, fear not! Despite all the frigid treatment that the independent film offering of Ayn Rand’s literary masterpiece received from critics (with the New York Times declining to even review it), the films producers will not be “going Galt” and leaving us an unfinished symphony.
They have raised all the necessary funding to finance the sequel, Atlas Shrugged Part II, and production will begin in April:
“Atlas Shrugged Part 2,” the second film in a proposed trilogy adapting Ayn Rand’s 1957 capitalist epic, is scheduled to start principal photography in April in Los Angeles and Colorado, with an eye toward an October 2012 theatrical release, producers revealed Thursday.
Businessman and Rand acolyte John Aglialoro, who financed the production and distribution of the first “Atlas Shrugged” film for $20 million, and producer Harmon Kaslow announced that they have raised the necessary financing for the sequel. They declined to reveal the final budget, but in an earlier interview, Kaslow said they were aiming for a production budget in the $10 million-to-$15 million range.
“Atlas Shrugged” the novel takes place at an unspecified future time in which the U.S. is mired in a deep depression and a mysterious phenomenon is causing the nation’s leading industrialists to disappear or “strike.”
Unfortunately, the original cast wasn’t contractually locked in for sequels, so there may be some recasting (is it too late to hope for Angelina Jolie to be Dagny Taggert and Brad Pitt to be John Galt?). Despite so much adversity and so many challenges, the creators of the Shrugged films are pioneers. They are doing something innovative and new: they are bringing the ideas of liberty and individualism out of the streets, taking them off the protest signs, and expressing them in the form of art.
There can be no doubting our eyes: in the Bush-Obama era, we are seeing a resurgence like never before of libertarian activism and political engagement. People are coming together to oppose the corruption, malfeasance, incompetence, and waste of the monolithic, centralized, bureaucratic, nation state. They are seeing the power and inherent goodness of localism and individualism. They are waking up to the fatal conceit that a few smart men in Washington can make our lives better, or would if they even could.
These new activists are growing in number steadily and with increasing momentum and they are swarming the world of electoral politics and public discourse over public policy, but what we need next– and it cannot come soon enough– is to direct and celebrate all these efforts and all this energy in the world of art. We need to occupy the artistic world as well as the political world. Here at The Silver Underground, the official blog of our very own independent film, Silver Circle, that’s the idea that undergirds our vision and our mission: that art has a very special power to inspire people and to express ideas with a special poignancy.
Like the idea of a film about rebels struggling against the immorality of a society based on lies and mass theft? This year, you’ll have the opportunity to see two.
And don’t forget to visit our official website to learn more about the Silver Circle Movie:http://SilverCircleMovie.com
