It's truly odd: during most of his long and prolific career, Robert Ludlum couldn’t get Hollywood to answer the phone. But since his death in 2001 at the age of 73 from a subdural hematoma, he's been doing very, very well.
It's true that his 25 pre-death novels have done well; enough in bookstores. most are still in print and even during his lifetime, he attached legendary directors like John Frankenheimer and Sam Peckinpah.
Major-at-the-time stars responded, too, like Burt Lancaster and Michael Caine. But the movies that resulted didn’t light up anybody's marquee, and by the time Ludlum died the most interest his work could generate was an off-brand mini-series based on The Apocalypse Watch, starring sadly minor attractors like Patrick Bergin and a pre-Sideways Virginia Madsen.
Then he died. And then came Matt Damon.
Since then, of course, he's had a hell of a posthumous ride. Not one, not two, but three Bournemovies, with rumors of more in the works, that have blown the tops off of various box offices. A string of 'new' novels under the Ludlum name, many of which have sold as well as the old stuff that Ludlum himself actually wrote, and no less than three more Ludlum projects in various stages of big-time movie-making.
And now the newest: a version of his global conspiracy novel The Materese Circle is set to star not only Denzel Washington, but Tom Cruise as well.
You can look on the bright side and say that good material rises to the top, even if it takes some time getting there (though there are many critics that would disagree with that re: Ludlum, and point to how little the movies retain from R.L.'s source material). Or you could look on the slightly more cynical side and lament how the best thing that ever happened to Mr. Ludlum was dying. Since then, he's been a growth industry.
0 comments:
Post a Comment