The Prestige

[DB7]

Here is a little information about "The Prestige".
http://www.christophernolan.net/

I received an email from Christopher Priest, who wrote the original novel The Prestige. He says that Chris Nolan's movie adaptation of the book still seems to be fairly high in Nolan's priorities. The novel has been optioned to Newmarket for several years. Priest has seen an advance copy of Jonathan Nolan's screenplay, and says that "it is an extraordinary and brilliant script, a fascinating adaptation of my novel. Should the film be made, it seems likely it will be a return to the unusual and challenging material that made Memento so memorable."

The Prestige is a novel about two rival magicians in turn-of-the-century London:

In 1878, two young stage magicians clash in the dark during the course of a fraudulent séance. From this moment on, their lives become webs of deceit and revelation as they vie to outwit and expose one another.

Their rivalry will take them to the peaks of their careers, but with terrible consequences. In the course of pursuing each other's ruin, they will deploy all the deception their magicians' craft can command--the highest misdirection and the darkest science.

Blood will be spilled, but it will not be enough. In the end, their legacy will pass on for generations...to descendants who must, for their sanity's sake, untangle the puzzle left to them.

[DB7]

Bale & Jackman to Battle in The Prestige
Source: The Hollywood Reporter October 3, 2005


Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman are in talks to star in Touchstone Pictures' The Prestige, which will serve as Batman Begins helmer Christopher Nolan's next directorial outing, says The Hollywood Reporter.

Bale and Jackman will play rival magicians in turn-of-the-century London who battle each other for trade secrets. The rivalry is so intense that it turns them into murderers. The title refers to the residue left after a magician's successful trick.

The script is based on Christopher Priest's 1996 novel of the same name and was adapted by Nolan's brother, Jonathan.

[DB7]

(dragon_eye @ Oct 13 2005, 10:14 AM) I know Jonah has been working on this script for a while, and it sounds really good-- a magic historical piece. Looking forward to it.

The book is very good and traces the feud from turn of the century til present day but I'd imagine it'll be difficult to capture on film unless they focus chiefly on the rivalry between the two magicians.

[DB7]

David Bowie Joining Nolan's Prestige
Source: The Hollywood Reporter November 20, 2005


Rock star David Bowie (Labyrinth) is in talks to play inventor Nikola Tesla in The Prestige, a thriller from Batman Begins director Christopher Nolan, says The Hollywood Reporter.

Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale and Michael Caine also star in the story of rival magicians in early 20th century London. The Tesla character is based on the real-life Serbian-American who discovered the rotating magnetic field.

The script, on which Nolan is working, is based on Christopher Priest's 1996 novel and was adapted by Nolan's brother, Jonathan, who also wrote the short story on which Nolan's breakout movie, Memento, was based.

The movie is scheduled to shoot in January with a budget in the $40 million range, adds the trade. Disney will distribute the film domestically, and Warner Bros. internationally.

[dylan]

Odd - Bowie is pushing 60 while Tesla in the novel would be around 30-ish. He dosn't even look like Tesla.

[DB7]

(dylan @ Nov 22 2005, 03:57 PM) Odd - Bowie is pushing 60 while Tesla in the novel would be around 30-ish. He dosn't even look like Tesla.

I doubt he's that young. When Tesla is in London he never makes an appearance and it's only years when he's asked to construct the vanishing man apparatus. I had a sort of 50 year old mad inventor image to mind.

[thomasjeromenewton]

Old or not, Bowie is apparently confirmed. As is Scarlett Johansson, and Nolan's new best pal (and Britmovie icon) Michael Caine. This is posted on empireonline.co.uk


Chris Nolan’s The Prestige, a tale of magicians battling over trade secrets continues to draw cast members like flies to honey.

The latest addition to the cast is Scarlett Johansson, who will play a magician’s assistant named Olivia who has dealings with each of the duelling twosome.

Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale are honing up their wand-waving skills for the leads, while Michael Caine and David Bowie are also attached.


I think it should be cracking

[DB7]

Brief trailer:
YouTube - The Prestige - Trailer Footage

[dylan]

Here's a link to the website of the author of The Prestige, Chris Priest:

Christopher Priest

For those who have read Chris's great novel, the film omits the contemporary framing narrative and is just set in the turn of the century.

D.

[DB7]

Exclusive : Nolan talks The Prestige
October 4, 2006

“Every great magic trick consists of three acts. The first act is called ‘The Pledge’: the magician shows you something ordinary; but, of course, it probably isn’t. The second act is called ‘The Turn’: the magician makes this ordinary something do something extraordinary. Now you are looking for the secret, but you won’t find it. That’s why there is a third act called ‘The Prestige’: it’s the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance and you see something shocking you’ve never seen before.”

These words, pronounced with solemn conviction by British actor Michael Caine, introduce Christopher Nolan’s new movie: “The Prestige.” Set in turn-of-the-century England, the film follows the battle for supremacy between two magicians: Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Borden (Christian Bale). In a world where magicians are the most popular and grand of public entertainments, where love is entangled with betrayal, tragedy forever links the two rivals, and nothing seems to get in the way of their mutual obsession. “In an era before television and radio, just at the very beginning of cinema, magicians were very much larger figures in the entertainment world than they are now,” says co-writer/director Nolan. “They were the rock stars of their day. Magic still exists today, and always will, but it was much bigger then. It took to the popular culture’s consciousness and imagination, and for that reason the stakes of the story become much higher than if it were set in the contemporary world, because of the element of fame, fortune and professional rivalry between magicians. It was also a time of massive technological change, and the story deals with the birth of the modern scientific era in the postindustrial revolution. So, it was a pretty extraordinary era, actually, in terms of intellectual adventure and scientific experimentation. All of these things that also drew me to the novel made it the ideal time to be addressing the issue of magic versus science.”
The story revolves around this conflict, where the lines that delimit reality and fiction, scientific or supernatural, are not clear. As the filmmaker behind the acclaimed films “Memento” and “Batman Begins” explains: “The film has elements of what I suppose could be considered supernatural, but it is more about the relationship between new science and magic. When scientific discoveries are new, and the film takes place soon after the birth of electricity, for example, there are a lot of new and exciting things going on in the world of science at the time that would be seen as supernatural, but are not really. So, it is also perhaps about science fiction, about the science of tomorrow, in a way.”

Working with the science of today is Christopher Nolan, who we met in the sound editing room of “The Prestige”, meticulously revising and trying to enhance each frame of his film: “We have had a lot of fun making it, but I think the actual process we are doing now, which is the sound mixing, is generally one of the most fun parts of filmmaking for me, because basically you have made the film at this point and what we are now doing is simply trying to improve it. So, it is quite an enjoyable process, polishing what you have done.” A delicate and fundamental process, that shows how closely involved Nolan is with his movies from beginning to end, from the writing to the last stages of postproduction. One wonders if it is hard to finally let go of the film: “It is a little bit hard, but you know when you have reached the point where you are just fiddling with the film and not improving it. You know when it happens and at that point you are finished with it, though a film isn’t really finished until the audience sees it, because you don’t make them for yourself.”

Based on Christopher Priest’s book, Nolan’s film is a “pretty free and loose adaptation of a tremendously exciting book that had many ideas, more than you can get into a screenplay,” he describes. “The challenge really was to try to keep the essence of what we thought were the most interesting elements of a large book, with a lot going on. I think Priest liked the screenplay, and we got his blessing, but he understood that we had to take some liberties in order to make it work as a film.”

“The Prestige” reunites Christopher Nolan with Christian Bale and Michael Caine, both of whom he directed in “Batman Begins”. “Christian and Michael came in quite late in the day,” admits Nolan. “Originally we were going to make this film before ‘Batman Begins’, with a different cast, and then realized that we didn’t have enough time to do it justice, so we put it off. Christian found out about it and read the script, called me up and said he was interested in playing the magician Alfred Borden, which seemed exactly right. In the case of Michael Caine, his character feels like it was written for him; but the truth is that it wasn’t, rather years before I met him. But it fits him like a glove.”
Nolan, on the contrary, had never worked with Hugh Jackman before: “Hugh came on board before Christian, actually. He just seemed to embody exactly the balance we needed between having that sense of integrity of the classic leading man and this great authentic stage showmanship that the magician Rupert Angier has to have. As opposed to Christian’s character, he has a wonderful understanding of the interaction between performer and live audience, which Hugh actually has. And he also has great depths as an actor that I think hadn’t really been explored.”

In the case of music icon David Bowie, who had a song in “Memento”, the British filmmaker took it upon himself to convince his admired musician/actor to accept a small but key role – that of scientist / electrical pioneer Nikolai Tesla. “He was the only guy I ever had in mind to play Tesla,” says Nolan. “His function is small, but very important, and he really has an extraordinarily charismatic and noticeable presence. I wanted someone who wasn’t a movie star. So, I flew out to New York to meet him and told him that he had to do it, that I didn’t have anyone else in mind who could play his role the way I saw it, and he responded immediately. David is pretty clear on what he does and doesn’t want to do.”

“The Prestige” delves into the mysteries of illusion, a field that has fascinated him throughout his life. “What is interesting is that once you understand more about how tricks are constructed, and how the methods work, you will go see magicians and be able to figure out a certain amount of what they do,” says the director. “But what that means is that it is even more impressive when they actually do something you can’t figure out, because you are baffled. There is real joy to being fooled in that way, when you think you know how things are done. It is actually more fun.”

[Phil Turner]

Watched this film last week and was pleasantly surprised. Certainly not a classic, but nice period detail and a strong story, let down slightly by an overly contrived ending. Good to see Michael Caine in a substantial supporting role, and Christopher Nolan is a talented modern director who I admire very much (despite the awful Batman Begins). I thought Christian Bale and David Bowie acquitted themselves well, but I feel that Scarlett Johansson was slightly miscast.

Regards
Phil Turner

[DB7]

I enjoyed it but not as much as I did the book. Caine's role was only minor in the novel and the Vanishing Man apparatus was ridiculously extravagant for the era - it puts David Copperfield to shame. Somehow the film never captured the escalating feud between Anger and Borden, nor the atmosphere of Victorian London.

Might grow on me after a couple of dvd viewings in time.

[jamesraykenney]

It came out a little after 'The Illusionist' over here, and so I may not have given it a fair viewing(seeing as how i thought that 'The Illusionist' was EASLY the best movie of the year, and instantly became one of my all time favorite movies), but it just seemed to lack 'something'...

It just seemed so 'Hollywood'.
Was it really a British film???

[DB7]

Originally Posted by jamesraykenney It came out a little after 'The Illusionist' over here, and so I may not have given it a fair viewing(seeing as how i thought that 'The Illusionist' was EASLY the best movie of the year, and instantly became one of my all time favorite movies), but it just seemed to lack 'something'... It just seemed so 'Hollywood'. Was it really a British film???

A co-production but the general conscensus would perhaps be that it was American. Personally I felt they chopped some important parts of the novel and failed to create an authentic Victorian atmosphere. I'm not totally surprised as the novels frequent flashbacks would make framing of the story challenging.

[WiseFilms]

I liked a couple of the Christopher Nolan Nolan films I saw before this -a lot!- and I was really disappointed with The Prestige. Didn't read the Priest novel, but I doubt that makes a difference in one liking the movie better. I heard it was very loosely based on it.

Hugh Jackman and Scarlett Johansson starred in a far more inviting and warm film about magic in 2006, incidentally: Woody Allen's underrated Scoop.

Even as a Bowie fan, I found little to relish in the performances here.