A modern film adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel Fahrenheit 451 has been put into development. HBO is said to be behind the project which will star Michael B. Jordan as lead Guy Montag and Michael Shannon as his superior, Captain Beatty.
According to Variety, the made-for-TV film will be co-written by Amir Naderi and Ramin Bahrani, the latter of which is also directing the picture. Sarah Green, Alan Gasmer and Peter Jaysen are also listed as executive producers.
For those not familiar, Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel originally published in 1953 in which books have been outlawed and “firemen” are in charge of burning them to suppress their ideas. When protagonist Montag meets a free-thinking neighbor, Clarisse McClellan, he begins to question everything he knows.
The book was developed into a film in 1966 by French director François Truffaut and has since become a cult classic. Given its popularity (it is common reading material for high school students, for example), it’s surprising that we haven’t seen another movie adaptation since (Mel Gibson apparently held the rights for a while but abandoned the project in 1999, The Verge notes).
Sources tell Variety that though it is in early development, the project is moving toward a production commitment at HBO.
