A few months back, it was announced that Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s company, Imagine Entertainment, along with Julie Yorn’s LBI Entertainment and street artist Shepard Fairey, would be moving forward with a new adaptation of George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel ‘1984’. It appears now that the project has found it’s screenwriter in the form of Noah Oppenheim, who happens to be a very hot writer at the moment despite not having a produced film to his name.
Deadline broke the news of Oppenheim’s attachment to ‘1984’. The writer first appeared on Hollywood’s radar when his Jackie Kennedy biopic ‘Jackie’ appeared on the 2012 Black List, a yearly list with the hottest unproduced scripts that made their way through town. Since then, he’s been attached to the remakes of ‘Snabba Cash’ and ‘War Games’, along with an adaptation of the young adult novel ‘The Maze Runner’ and ‘The Secret Life of Houdini’, which has Gary Ross attached to direct, but still hasn’t had any of his work appear in front of the public yet. Since ‘1984’ has big names behind it like Ron Howard’s, I’d assume that this adaptation of Orwell’s opus would be Oppenheim’s first foray into feature films.
For those of you unfamiliar with Ministry of Truth worker Winston Smith’s journey in the dystopian novel that spawned all other dystopian novels, here’s a synopsis of the story:
In 1984, London is a grim city where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be.
