Normally the blue birds that deliver the mail sing a song as they fly along, but today they seemed grim and despondent. Perhaps it’s because they had to drop the lump of coal that is the press release announcing a greenlit Atlas Shrugged: Part 2 into the old inbox. Or perhaps they’ve just been sick.
Either way, a follow-up to the completely inept filmmaking of the first film will be standing awkwardly in front of cameras soon. Not only that, it will ambitiously seek to have the movie ready for theaters by October of this year at the zero hour of, what the release calls, “a fever pitched presidential election season.”
It even comes with its own poster and a spooky teaser trailer where pundits can’t agree on how pronounce Ayn Rand‘s name:
The production boasts the inclusion of Duncan Scott, who was producer and editor on the Ayn Rand adaptation We The Living, although it’s unclear exactly what role he’ll play. He has experience as an assistant director, which would put him already ahead of the first film’s director, Paul Johansson, although Johansson almost assuredly will be involved as he played John Galt in the first. Or they’ll replace him. It probably won’t matter too much either way.
Pessimism and politics aside, the first failed on purely cinematic levels. Why? Because it was the vanity project of a producer (John Aglialoro) who had never made a movie before who also wrote the script for it, the text was dense and difficult to adapt, and the director was wet behind the ears with a cast that wasn’t doing him many favors. With those ingredients, it wasn’t a surprising outcome to see a train wreck onscreen.
Maybe this second swing will be better.