Despite our own perfumed, heart-dotted love letter to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, recent efforts to film the late author's best-known, libertarian-spawning novel have not been going so well. The project's main selling point, Charlize Theron, has apparently dropped out of the cast since being attached to it last year—but, according to Deadline, the producer is forging ahead with the film anyway.
Entrepreneur John Aglialoro, who purchased the rights to the book 17 years ago, is bankrolling an ambitious plan that intends to break Rand's massive novel into four films. A statement from director Stephen Polk says that the first installment of Atlas Shrugged will start production in L.A. on June 11 despite the absence of Theron (or Maggie Gyllenhaal, who has also been considered for the lead role of railroad industrialist Dagny Taggart).
Polk—whose efforts to get the film made surely exemplify a heroic struggle against the tide of collectivist intrusion and mediocrity on par with Atlas Shrugged's own—says his own problems with "cutting through the bureaucracy and just getting started" have been a big obstacle in getting the movie made. Maybe he should call up the country's foremost Rand disciple and prominent libertarian, Rand "don't-call-me-a-namesake" Paul; after abolishing the tyrannical practice of outlawing segregation, the would-be senator from Kentucky can focus on turning Hollywood into an Objectivist utopia that makes good, anti-government movies again. You know, like that classic of States'-rights advocacy, The Birth Of A Nation.