Counting Kurt Vonnegut among your favorite authors is practically a cliché at this point, but that’s only because he’s awesome. Now comes word that one of my favorite screenwriters, Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine, etc) is writing a screen adaptation of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five for Guillermo Del Toro. Everything about that makes me incredibly happy, except that it sounds like they’re planning to conveniently ignore the plots of Slaughterhouses 1 through 4. LAME.
Another long-gestating Universal project — part of a four picture deal he signed in 2008 — is a big screen version of Kurt Vonnegut‘s “Slaughterhouse-Five.” Not much has been heard about this one recently, but del Toro has lined up a helluva writer to take it on. “Charlie [Kaufman] and I talked for about an hour-and-a-half and came up with a perfect way of doing the book,” he told the Daily Telegraph (today’s print edition, not yet online). “I love the idea of the Trafalmadorians [the aliens of ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’] — to be ‘unstuck in time,’ where everything is happening at the same time. And that’s what I want to do. It’s just a catch-22. The studio will make it when it”s my next movie, but how can I commit to it being my next movie until there’s a screenplay? Charlie Kaufman is a very expensive writer!”
“I”ll work it out,” he added. [ThePlaylist]
For a second there, I was wondering “Wait, why would Guillermo Del Toro want to direct Slaughterhouse Five?” But then I was all, “Oh right, aliens.”
But he can turn Billy Pilgrim into a Pale Man (Hellboy Hitler?) if it means I get to see Charlie Kaufman adapt Kurt Vonnegut. Don’t screw this up, Universal. Meanwhile, not to be outdone, my sources tell me that Charlie’s brother Donald is working on an adaptation of Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle for Adam Shankman. It will be animated, and about actual cats. Pete Hammond called it the most commercial script he’s ever read.
