Luhrmann Will Try to Make Gatsby Great

Well, the 1974 version of The Great Gatsby looked nice…

Variety reports that Baz Luhrmann has picked up the rights to make a new big screen version of the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic, The Great Gatsby.

Long regarded as one of the greatest American novels, Gatsby hasn’t enjoyed similar success in other media. There’s been a stage version, and an opera that while reasonably well-received, hasn’t been regarded as brilliant (I saw it and yeah, good, not, umm, great). There have been three film versions, including a silent one, a 1949 try starring Alan Ladd, and the most famous one, a 1974 misfire starring Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, and Sam Waterston. That one is enormously sluggish and lifeless, but it is also extremely pretty and probably just as well watched with the sound off so you can just admire the costumes and lovely people.

You can at least expect that from Luhrmann; we know the production design will be fantastic and the clothes to die for. How he handles the rest, including a script from a brilliant book whose brilliance partially results from just the quality of the prose, is another question. And of course the other is whether Nicole Kidman will play Daisy. I’d put money on that.