Johansson is a passionate guy; it will be interesting to see the results of his efforts.

An excerpt:

The Hollywood press has taken a dismissive view of the project. How could an outsider hope to produce a successful film with so little time, a reported budget of $5 million, a director with limited film experience, and a cast without stars?

Offsetting those limitations, however, is the passion of the producers, cast, and crew to realize the vision of the novel. That’s why Johansson took on the challenge of directing on such short notice. (Though Atlas will be his first film, Johansson has considerable experience directing TV, with an Emmy to his credit.) Schilling was attracted to the lead roll because she loved Rand’s work, having read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Many crew members came on board at less than their usual fees just to be part of the project. As for the budget, the producers says the actual figure is at least twice the reported $5 million. And Atlas is not really a star vehicle. The power of an adaptation, and its ultimate success or failure, turn on how well it captures Rand’s narrative and its meaning. As an independent production, this adaptation has pursued that goal directly, without having to bargain with studios, stars, or screenwriters who don’t get it.

See the full article for much more.

Big Hollywood has enjoyed two visits to the film’s set, which our own Charles Winecoff will be writing more about soon, but due to the fact that much of what we’re reading in the media regarding the film’s production doesn’t coincide with what we’ve seen and heard for ourselves, I asked producer Harmon Kaslow to help set the record straight.

Much has been made of the film’s reported budget of $5 million, especially for a project major studios have shied away from out of budgetary concerns. Like most smart producers, Kaslow won’t talk specifics, but there’s more to the story than the $5 million...

Assuming we’re talking in the area of $15 to $20 million to film the entire novel, with no big star salaries that’s still a low budget but not a ridiculously low budget. As far as the casting of unknowns, as is the case with any film, budget constraints are a reality and when you’re working in the arena of millions as opposed to hundreds of millions, you’re not going to get a Charlize Theron or Angelina Jolie.

Of course, replacing Angelina Jolie with Taylor Schilling isn’t an entirely bad move.

Taylor Schilling (cast as Dagny Taggart)

See the full article for much more, including photos of the actors playing John Galt and Jim Taggart.

I will be giving a participant-sponsored talk on Objectivist Investing at the 2010 FreeMinds Summer Seminar.

It’s going to be a good talk starting with Rand’s distinction between the primacy of existence vs. the primacy of consciousness. It will cover the two main schools of investing - fundamentals vs. technicals - and how one naturally aligns with the primacy of existence and the other the primacy of consciousness. It will conclude with a synthesis showing that the stock market reflects the facts of reality as filtered through the minds of all its participants.

I will also be talking about specific investors such as Warren Buffett and the Objectivist Jonathan Hoenig of Capitalist Pig Asset Management who writes the TradeCraft column for SmartMoney and appears on Fox New’s stock market show Saturday mornings. I will address the current stock market and how to interpret
it.

Because it is participant sponsored I am worried about people not knowing about it and low turnout. I will be on a panel on Objectivist Investing the afternoon of Saturday July 3. I am hoping to be able to move the talk to after that panel so I can mention it to people who might be interested.

I’m not writing a formal review of Ayn Rand’s Ideal, in part because the limited run ends soon, but several people asked me for my comments. The cast and crew, not Objectivists but young people who apparently are recent graduates of local theater schools, treated the material respectfully and enthusiastically. But the play has its problems, as even Dr. Peikoff conceded in his published Introduction. It’s static, repetitive, and lacking a strong dramatic arc. Though many of the performers were admirable, the gal in the key part of Kay Gonda was miscast; she looks like a comedienne, while I suspect that only Garbo would be right for this role. Notwithstanding the negatives, the production doesn’t deserves the smears it received from the major New York newspapers. The play does have a brilliantly ingenious and original premise—Rand came up with those in abundance—and it provides some fascinating insights into her early philosophical ideas, which would be dramatized more effectively in her mature fiction. I’ve always said that Rand is a far better novelist than playwright. Still, as I noted archly in my review of her play Think Twice some years ago, even second-rate Rand is superior to a lot of first-rate everyone else.

The long-brewing feature version of author Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” has begun shooting in Los Angeles as a $5 million indie produced by John Aglialoro and Harmon Kaslow.

Cameras began rolling over the weekend on a five-week shoot for “Atlas Shrugged Part One” with Paul Johansson directing from Brian Patrick O’Toole’s script. Aglialoro would have lost the feature rights if the film wasn’t in production by Saturday.

A spokesman for Aglialoro — the CEO of exercise equipment producer Cybex — said there will be at least one more “Atlas Shrugged” shot after the current film’s completed. Rand’s massive novel is divided into three parts, each consisting of 10 chapters.

“Atlas,” published in 1957, takes place in a dystopian version of the U.S. in which society has collapsed as the government gains increasing controlover industry. The decline occurs while the most productive citizens, led by John Galt, begin vanishing.

Johansson (”One Tree Hill”) portrays Galt. The lead role of railroad executive Dagny Taggart has gone to Taylor Schilling (”Mercy) and the part of Henry Reardon is being played by Grant Bowler (”Ugly Betty”).

See the full article in Variety for more.

We have a special announcement! Dr. Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, is scheduled to appear on the Glenn Beck program on Fox News Channel, Tuesday, June 15th for the entire hour to discuss “when fiction becomes fact.” It is a special program dedicated to “Atlas Shrugged” and Vince Flynn’s book “Term Limits.” The show starts at 5 p.m., Eastern time (2 p.m., Pacific time).

If you are unable to see the live airing of this program, please consult your local listings for a possible rebroadcast.

An original Ayn Rand manuscript will be up for auction at Sotheby’s New York on Friday, June 18 at 10:00 AM. This is the first major original Rand manuscript to come to auction in many years, and Sothebys has noted that handwritten Rand manuscripts of this size are rare at auction.

This work is Rand’s manuscript for her first speech at Ford Hall Forum, “The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age,” delivered on March 26, 1961.