Inkheart movie trailer & Cornelia Funke news

Even though the Inkheart movie isn't due to be released until September, 2008, the first trailer has been posted online!

I think it looks pretty good, and for the most part, they've done an awesome job of casting. I didn't picture Basta with a mohawk, though. (I assume the guy with the mohawk is Basta).

Thanks to Educating Alice for the trailer news.

The third book in the trilogy, entitled Inkdeath, is also due to be released in 2008. Amazon.com lists the release date as April 7. 2008, but The Official Cornelia Funke web site says that there's a "little less than a year to go" until the U.S. release of Inkdeath, so I think a Fall publication date is more likely. You can't preorder the Inkdeath hardcover on Amazon.com, but you can preorder the audio CD. If you absolutely can't wait, you may be able to find the German version, Tintentod.

In other Cornelia Funke news, the official web site announced on October 22 that she's working on a sequel to Dragon Rider!


Update 18 Nov 2007: I'm sorry to say that the Inkheart trailer was removed by New Line Cinema because they didn't have the rights to use the music in it for internet distribution. Read the details here on Cornelia Funke's web site. The letter says that there will be an official teaser trailer on December 7, so we won't have to wait too long.

Thanks to Fuse #8 for the news.

Yes, it really is as bad as we feared

Last night we went to see the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix movie. One of the trailers that played before the movie was a preview for The Dark is Rising movie - and from the preview it looks like it's going to be as bad as we feared. I almost wouldn't have recognized it if they hadn't called the boy Will Stanton early in the preview. There was very little there that I recognized, although I admit it has been a few years since I read the books, and I don't have a good memory for details. There was this whole mall/security guard thing going on that made me think, "What the heck?" (And I thought that I read that in the movie Will was an American living in Britain - if so, why do the people in the mall speak with American accents?)

Even worse, the character of Will looks completely different. In the book, it always seemed to me that he had a depth to him even from the very beginning, that made it totally believable that he was an Old One. The Will in the movie trailer seems to be a gee whiz teenager who thinks it's really cool to be able to do magic stuff.

Looking at the trailer objectively, if I didn't know the book I'd think it looked like a pretty cool movie. Which, unfortunately, doesn't bode well. There will probably be enough people who haven't read the book going to see the movie that Fox Walden will feel vindicated.

View the trailer here and judge for yourself

Other The Dark is Rising movie posts:

• The Dark is Rising - say what? (Wands and Worlds)
  
• The Hype Is Rising (Oz and Ends)
  
• Questions about the Dark Is Rising Movie (Oz and Ends)
  
• Dude. What the crap? (Bookshelves of Doom)
  
• Movie: The Dark is Rising (Book Moot)
  
• Positively "hasty" (Book Moot)

Buzz or hype?

A few hours ago, a commenter who identified himself only as "nick" left a comment on my post about The Dark is Rising movie. In my post, I had expressed concern about the changes made to the movie, leaving very little of the original story intact. "nick" expressed his opinion that the movie would be bigger than the book. Fair enough. He's entitled to his opinion, and unfortunately, he could be right.

But then "nick" gushed about a new MTV reality show about the lives of six interns on The Dark is Rising set, including a link to the MTV web page about the show. Something about his post set off alarm bells in my head; my first thought was that it was an attempt on the part of either the movie marketing people, or more likely, MTV, to artificially generate buzz for the movie or the reality show. When I read that J.L.Bell has had similar comments on his The Dark is Rising posts, I felt fairly certain that this is a marketing stunt.

"nick" has since responded to my cynical reply to his comment, expressing his outrage that I doubted him. He claims to be a movie critic, but his poorly written posts and anonymity seem to belie that. But, I could be wrong. He could really be a movie critic, or a teen excited about the new movie and related reality show.

If it is a marketing stunt, though, it's likely to backfire on them. I believe that teens today, having grown up in a marketing-saturated environment, are sophisticated enough to be able to tell the difference between real buzz and marketer-generated hype.

I'm curious: has anyone else had similar comments posted on your blog?

You can read my discussion with "nick" in the comments at this post.