“Someone’s going to make a movie of it someday,
and it might as well be us.”


In 2004 two novice screenwriters were headed for Hollywood with a screenplay they had concocted based on Milton's Paradise Lost. Hollywood laughed and turned up its nose
. . . until they met a producer who had been fascinated with the prospect of battling angels since childhood. Before long financing was generated and a director enlisted, and so it began.

More than three centuries after John Milton wrote Paradise Lost …
Over one century after Thomas Edison invented the moving picture …
These visionaries would be the first to dare to unite the two.

Or would they?

Decades earlier another seed had been brewing. As early as 1973 a screenplay for Paradise Lost had been published by a British author. He died in 1980 and the script lay dormant for decades. The producer who had partnered with him on the project, however, never let his option on the screenplay drop. And suddenly this year we get news that an independently produced film of Milton’s epic may be quietly on its way to production—while the other highly publicized project, a megabucks affair, after numerous public interviews and much speculation, lingers in pre-production limbo for a fifth year.

The horse race is on!

And here is the “Tote Board” (a horseracing term) for today:

The "Horses"	BLOCKBUSTER	INDIE
Production Company	Legendary Pictures 300, The Dark Knight, Superman Returns and Warner Brothers .	Granite Entertainment and STV Networks Bollywood style films
Working Title	Paradise	Paradise Lost
Projected Budget	Upwards of $100,000,000	$30,000,000 - $35,000,000
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Creators
Producer	Vincent Newman The Betrayed, Felon, Blind Horizon	Martin Poll The Lion in Winter, Nighthawks, Love and Death
Co-Producers	Jon Jashni, Thomas Tull, Dennis Bakriges Clash of the Titans, Where the Wild Things Are	Hank McCann, Bob Knotek, Jonas McCord Ask the Dust, Steel Magnolias
Director	Scott Derrickson The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Exorcism of Emily Rose	not announced (Arthur Penn bowed out)
Screenwriters	Philip de Blasi & Byron Willinger; reworked by Stuart Hazeldine (to make it more about warring angels, less about Adam and Eve)	John Collier collaborated on African Queen screenplay; many short stories in The New Yorker
Cast	not announced wish list for Satan had included Heath Ledger, Daniel Craig, Mickey Rourke	David Dunham as Adam, Patricia Li Bryan as Eve both unknowns; seeking big name for Satan
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chronology
Origin	2004: the screenwriters begin 2004: pitching their idea	1960's: Poll begins approaching 1960's: studios, unsuccessfully 1973:'s Collier's screenplay 1960's: published in book form
Project Announced	2005	2009
Current Status	Pre-production	2009 filming begins
Projected Release	2011	2010
and by the way...	This one may be in 3D	War? - What war? . . . more about this