• Apparently someone at Twentieth Century Fox is reading SpoutBlog lists for inspiration: a month after we suggested a contemporarily set adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels starring Will Ferrell, the studio has announced a contemporarily set adaptation of Gulliver’s  Travels starring Jack Black (really, though, the project has apparently been in the works for some time). Perhaps we’ll soon hear about a Candide movie at Paramount?
• Speaking of literary adaptations, a new CG-animated version of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is in the works, strangely with John Boorman, who cowrote the script, at the helm.
• Con Air director Simon West has finally found the lead for his CG-heavy Salvador Dali movie, and it’s quite a boring choice: Antonio Banderas. Considering the other competing Dali movies star such surprises as Al Pacino and Twilight’s Robert Pattinson, West is apparently taking the easy road.
• And while Dali has multiple theatrical releases on the way, poor Georgia O’Keefe has to settle on a Lifetime Television release, albeit one starring such heavies as Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons.
• Sylvester Stallone is continuing his career as a full-fledged filmmaker by writing, directing and co-starring in The Expendables, in which he and Jason Statham and Jet Li will play mercenaries on a mission to kill a South American dictator.

Yesterday I wrote of the news that Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov is helming an effects-heavy adaptation of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. It’s not entirely shocking, but it does still seem like a cruel joke. More specifically, it sounds like something Jasper Fforde would jest about in his Thursday Next novels. Of course, the news came just as I’m in the middle of Fforde’s latest, First Among Sequels, in which Pride and Prejudice is turned into a reality TV show.

Although I’m not exactly well read as far as literary classics go, I’ve been wondering what other revered books (particularly those in the public domain) could be reworked as potential summer blockbusters. Obviously, there are certain sci-fi, fantasy and adventure novels that work, yet the fitting fictions of Verne, Wells, Burroughs, Dumas and others are already fodder for cheap movies with lots of action and/or special effects. Therefore, I’ve tried to limit my choices to those books that aren’t such easy candidates for a Memorial Day weekend opening.

1. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

Dante’s epic poem has inspired a few films over the years, including the hugely successful 1911 silent L’Inferno, but it’s about time for Hollywood to bastardize the otherworldly tale with lots of computer-generated visuals. Maybe you’re thinking that What Dreams Come already made some attempt at this, and it failed at the box office. Sure, but it was still an awesome spectacle of a film. Now, think of something similar starring Will Smith as Dante. And some rewrites to allow for more fight scenes (yes, even in Heaven). The poem will be divided into a trilogy of films, of course.

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