Written by Jon Williams
Theatergoers
heading to the box office this weekend will be faced with a plethora of
choices, as usual, but for many of them it will come down to one big one: will
it be
Independence Day: Resurgence, opening
nearly twenty years after
the
original, or will it be
Finding Dory,
the charming animated sequel to
Finding
Nemo, now in its second week of release? Tough call. And it won’t get
any easier next weekend, which sees the opening of two new adaptations of
beloved classic books.
One of these
is
The BFG, which is based upon the
1982
novel by whimsical children’s author Roald Dahl. Brought to the screen by
director
Steven
Spielberg (and with a
soundtrack
by John Williams), it tells the fantastical tale of an orphan named Sophie, who
is kidnapped by what turns out to be a Big Friendly Giant (hence the title), an
outcast who needs her help to stop a band of giants with the not-so-friendly
tendency to eat other children. This is the first live-action version of
The BFG to be produced; a
made-for-TV
animated version came out in 1989.
The other
adaptation coming to theaters next week is
The
Legend of Tarzan, starring
Alexander
Skarsgard as the fabled man raised in the jungle by apes after the death of
his parents. The character originated in the 1914 novel
Tarzan
of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs and continued on through a number
of
sequels.
Burroughs was a prolific writer in the sci-fi and fantasy genres; he also wrote
the
Barsoom series (beginning with
A
Princess of Mars) that eventually spawned the film
John
Carter.
Tarzan,
though, is far and away Burroughs’s most famous creation; he is, in fact, one
of the most well-known characters in fiction, due in part (or maybe even
primarily) to the sheer number of movies and TV shows in which he has featured.
The most pervasive of these is a
series
of films starring gold medal-winning Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller in
the title role. One of the most successful
TV
series starred Ron Ely and ran from 1966-1968. Not surprisingly, Disney
made the most popular
animated
version in 1999, with a star-studded voice cast and a
soundtrack
by Phil Collins.
So if
history is any indication, both of these movies are sure to be quite popular,
and patrons will be looking for related material (and, as always, you can
search on our website for even more). Let us know which one you’ll be seeing
when it’s released, and stay tuned in the coming months for DVD and Blu-ray
release date information on these exciting new movies.