By Jason Apuzzo. After my one-line review of Atlas Shrugged, Part I I’d intended to stop talking about the film, but events keep making that impossible. Today, a mere week after bragging to The Hollywood Reporter about his great marketing plan, Atlas Shrugged, Part I producer John Aglialoro essentially tells the LA Times that he’s throwing in the towel on making Parts II and III. He’s also backing-off plans to expand Part I to 1000 screens.
Here are the LA Times money quotes, in which Aglialoro blames the demise of his incipient franchise on “critics,” rather than on his film:
“Critics, you won … I’m having deep second thoughts on why I should do Part 2. … Why should I put up all of that money if the critics are coming in like lemmings?” Aglialoro said. “I’ll make my money back and I’ll make a profit, but do I wanna go and do two? Maybe I just wanna see my grandkids and go on strike.”
So the critics who disliked his film are “lemmings.” I’m laughing at this because these “lemmings” would apparently include Kurt Loder of Reason Magazine, and a host of other like-minded critics I could name. But why bother? I’m sure we’re all just part of the vast leftist/Looter conspiracy out to get Mr. Aglialoro and his film.
What’s particularly galling here is that in his LA Times interview, Mr. Aglialoro indicated no plans to release the rights to Atlas Shrugged from the purgatory they currently inhabit while in his hands. As Libertas reported recently in our exclusive review of the Randall Wallace-Angelina Jolie Atlas Shrugged screenplay, so much more could’ve been made of this project – but Aglialoro’s intransigence in holding onto the rights is keeping better versions from being made.
What this currently means, of course, is that Atlas Shrugged, Part I will now join Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part I among other unfinished film franchises – the difference being that Brooks’ was actually intended to be a joke.
[UPDATE 4/28: Now Mr. Aglialoro is telling The Hollywood Reporter that he in fact will make Parts II and III, “even though critics hate the movie and business at movie theaters has fallen off a cliff.” He also continues to claim political persecution on the part of critics. “It was a nihilistic craze,” Aglialoro said. “Not in the history of Hollywood has 16 reviewers said the same low things about a movie. … They’re lemmings,” he said. “What’s their fear of Ayn Rand? They hate this woman. They hate individualism.” Apparently these ‘nihilistic lemmings’ who ‘hate individualism’ would also include Roger L. Simon of Pajamas Media, who referred to the film as a “fiasco.”
What a farce this is. It’s quite obvious that Mr. Aglialoro felt the need to make a public pronouncement as to whether he intends to passively squat on the rights to Atlas Shrugged, now that his first film has tanked. Possibly this was a result of our pressing him on the rights matter here at Libertas, since no one else in the media has brought this up. Who knows? There is a phrase for how Mr. Aglialoro is handling all this, however: amateur hour. Expect that Part II and Part III will not be made, and the rights quietly sold away in months ahead.]
Posted on April 27th, 2011 at 10:49am.
