All Beowulf, All the Time

Posted on August 14, 2006

Those who are fans of the 1,000 year-old epic poem Beowulf have a real treat in store for them this fall: there are is a veritable avalanche of Beowulf projects in the works. There's an opera and three films in the works. The biggest of the film projects is Beowulf, which stars Anthony Hopkins as King Hrothgar, Crispin Glover as Grendel and Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother; the film is directed by Robert Zemeckis. USA Today has the rundown on current and upcoming projects:

Beowulf & Grendel. Released in June, this Canadian art film was made in Iceland, starred Scottish actor Gerard Butler as Beowulf, and was directed by Sturla Gunnarsson, a Canadian descendant of Vikings.

Grendel: Transcendence of the Great Big Bad. The opera, which premiered in June, is based on John Gardner's 1971 book Grendel, which tells the story from the point of view of the monster. The opera, featuring mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves as the dragon, was written and directed by Lion King queen Julie Taymor and composed by her companion, Elliot Goldenthal.

Beowulf: Prince of the Geats. Due in 2007 and filmed in such locales as Norway and South Africa, it features a little-known cast and Emmy-winning filmmaker Scott Wegener at the helm. He rewrote the story to make Beowulf a man caught between two cultures as the son of an African explorer who marries into a Geat clan.

Beowulf. Also due in 2007, director Robert Zemeckis' version of the epic will use the performance-capture technique of his Polar Express. Besides Jolie and Hopkins (as the Danish king harassed by Grendel), the cast includes Ray Winstone as Beowulf and Crispin Glover as Grendel.

The Robert Zemeckis film has Neil Gaiman and Roger Avery as the screenwriters, so that alone makes the film worth seeing. Although we must admit we're not sold on the whole performance-capture thing. Still, you have to admit it certainly a creative way of approaching Beowulf, and Zemekis says it won't look like Polar Exress.