9 JG Ballard Stories That Must Be Filmed

Celebrating the life of Britain's late, great author

Apr 20th 2009 By Sam Ashurst

Concrete Island (1974)

The Star: Brad Pitt

The Director: David Fincher

The Pitch: So cinematic it feels like it’s been filmed already, Concrete Island contains one of the few original high concepts Hollywood hasn’t ravaged.

The story is simple, Robert Maitland is a 35-year old architect who crashes his Jaguar onto a traffic island surrounded by three busy motorways.

Maitland quickly discovers that escape is impossible, and desperately seeks rescue.

When none is forthcoming, he has to survive on items he finds in his car. And then Maitland soon discovers he’s not alone on the island...

This urban update of Robinson Crusoe contains a check-list of David Fincher’s favourite themes – a protagonist trapped by circumstance, alienated by technology, surrounded by a sinister modern world…

Finch didn’t get his Best Director Oscar for Benjamin Button (2008), but he might get to take one home if he makes Concrete Island.

Comments

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- alowe
  
  Apr 20th 2009, 13:12
  
  Cocaine Nights, too, please. First shot: tennis machine pumping out balls. Pull back slowly to reveal a player in tennis whites, lying dead on the floor in a growing pool of tennis balls.
  
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- MadMatt
  
  Apr 20th 2009, 18:28
  
  Natali has been struggling to get High-Rise made for years - probably because he wants to make it as bleak and darkly brilliant as you suggest. He's a perfect fit and seriously underrated, so I hope that one at least makes it to the screen.
  
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- chris999
  
  Apr 25th 2009, 0:00
  
  By the way, it's Heavenly Creatures - not Heavenly Girls.
  
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- chris999
  
  Apr 25th 2009, 0:00
  
  By the way, it's Heavenly Creatures - not Heavenly Girls.
  
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- jargonking
  
  Apr 26th 2009, 18:38
  
  You're forgetting Hello America, possibly the most cinematic of all his novels featuring a European expedition to explore an America abandoned by it's population more than a century earlier. The opening scene of the ship arriving in an empty New York is phenomenal.
  
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