BREAKING MOVIE/TV NEWS

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Radcliffe Enlisted For "All Quiet On The Western Front"

Actor Daniel Radcliffe ("Harry Potter") is attached to star in a new version of "All Quiet On The Western Front" based on the novel by author Erich Maria Remarque, first adapted to the big screen by director Lewis Milestone in 1930.

Producers Ian Stokell and Lesley Paterson for Sliding Down Rainbows Entertainment have drafted the new screenplay.

Orginally titled "Im Westen nichts Neues", the book was first published in 1929, written by German World War I vet Remarque, describing the German soldiers' physical and mental stress during the war and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of these soldiers upon returning home from the front.

In 1930, director Milestone's big screen adaptation, won the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director.


The book follows 'Paul Bäumer', a soldier who—urged on by his school teacher—joins the German army shortly after the start of World War I. Bäumer arrives at the 'Western Front' with his friends 'Tjaden', 'Müller' and 'Kropp', where they meet older soldier 'Stanislaus Katczinsky', nicknamed 'Kat', who becomes Paul's mentor.

While fighting at the front, Bäumer and his comrades have to engage in frequent battles and endure the dangerous and often squalid conditions of warfare.

The book does not focus on the heroic stories of bravery, but rather gives a view of the conditions in which the soldiers find themselves including the monotony between battles, the constant threat of artillery fire, the struggle to find food and the overarching role of random chance in the lives and deaths of the soldiers.

"We are not youth any longer", says Paul in the novel. "We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing from ourselves, from our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces."

Click the images to enlarge and Sneak Peek "All Quiet On The Western Front"...