A film adaptation of the Old English epic poem Beowulf is set to release on November 16. Directed by Robert Zemeckis—the man who gave audiences Back to the Future (all three parts) and Forrest Gump, for which he won an Oscar, among many others—the movie version of Beowulf owes more to the style of filmmaking he utilized in The Polar Express. Like that movie, released in 2004, Beowulf will be entirely computer animated, using performance capture technology, incorporating the movements of actors into animated characters. Among the big-name actors contributing their movements and voices to the movie are Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Crispin Glover, and Angelina Jolie. The screenplay was written by graphic novelist Neil Gaiman and screenwriter Roger Avary.
Zemeckis is also set to direct an adaptation of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), but the status of the project has been listed as "in preproduction" for the past five years.
In other movie news, Universal Studios recently announced that Ron Howard will direct Noah Baumbach's adaptation of Claire Messud's novel The Emperor's Children (Knopf, 2006).
