Michael B. Jordan Thinks Books are a Pleasure to Burn in Fahrenheit 451 Trailer

Everyone’s boyfriend Michael B. Jordan will no doubt be seen in many movies post-Black Panther. One of the first up is an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s classic Fahrenheit 451 made for HBO.

From this brief look at the movie, it seems as though HBO’s adaptation is skewing pretty closely to the book’s main beats. Here’s their official description of the project:

Fahrenheit 451 is based on Ray Bradbury’s classic novel. In a future where the media is an opiate, history is rewritten and “firemen” burn books, Jordan plays Guy Montag, a young fireman who struggles with his role as law enforcer and with his “mentor”, played by [Michael] Shannon. Premieres Spring 2018 on HBO.

While Fahrenheit 451 is an essential brilliant work that everyone should read—now more than ever—my interest in this movie is really sparked by Jordan as Montag and Shannon as Captain Beatty. Both are extremely compelling actors, and I think both excel at playing complex, conflicted characters; it will be fascinating to watch them play off of each other. Jordan has quite the transformative journey to go on with his character, and I can’t wait to see what he does with Montag’s increasing conflict with the dystopian status quo.

Fahrenheit already got a film treatment back in 1966, in a version directed by François Truffaut and starring Julie Christie. There was a BBC radio dramatization in 1982, and a stage play written by Bradbury that had its world debut in 1988, as well as a 1984 text-based computer game. But it seems to me that every age deserves its own interpretation of Bradbury’s masterpiece.

Its messages against censorship and totalitarianism—and its warnings about government and the manipulation of mass media—are, unfortunately, still as important today as they were upon the book’s publication in 1953, if not more so.

(image: HBO/screengrab)

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