Also from The Week, Universal Studios is working on a re-imagining of Moby Dick. I read elsewhere that Ahab will not be an obsessed sea captain, but a bit more stable though dynamic, and the perspective will allow the film to depict more of the terror of the great white whale.
I can’t see any good coming of this. I watched the Gregory Peck/Richard Basehart version recently (script written by Ray Bradbury), and although it was flawed I have a great fondness for it.
The chief problem I see is that nowadays everybody hates whalers (as the descendant of a whaling seacook, I take exception to that). When a TV version was done a few years ago, starring Patrick Stewart, they couldn’t help themselves–they had to start with a totally contrived scene about saving a whale. Pointless and anachronistic. I couldn’t watch any further.
I still enjoy the memory of a tee-shirt I saw a guy wearing in Bergen: “If we had dolphins, we’d eat them too!”