Phil Tippett's Directorial Debut to be... Niven's RINGWORLD!!!

Well folks, Harry here and it seems after years of flirting, Phil Tippett... my personal favorite effects guy working in film today... has finally committed to a project... and boy is it a doozy. For a long time, James Cameron was going to make AVATAR... a huge and gigantic Science Fiction film... but he dropped the ball... didn't follow through, and now Tippett is the fella reaching for an even higher plateau for effects with Larry Niven's RINGWORLD.

I have often felt that RINGWORLD was quite a bit like the science fiction version of GREAT EXPECTATIONS, literatively speaking. GREAT EXPECTATIONS , while a great work, always felt a bit stifled by descriptive passages, that while great to read, often times got in the way of the narrative.

RINGWORLD is a great book, if it has a fault, it is that Niven paints TOOO vivid a picture of Ring World... and sacrifices the characters and narrative. While reading the book, it is fine... I love reading it... but as a film adaptation... Tippett will have to dodge the problems that have often plagued adapters of GREAT EXPECTATIONS... and that is making a ponderously visual film that never really has a point.

But I have faith in Tippett. His work has always been about character... his creatures having reasons to be doing what they are doing... he's spent endless hours talking with Harryhausen... and I'm quite encouraged by this development in his career.

The original book was near brilliant, if Tippet can do to this, what Harryhausen did to the Jason and the Argonauts mythology.... using the myth as a basis and expanding upon it... this could be... remarkable. Personally... if I were you, I'd be excited. Of course, the problem is... at the moment there doesn't seem to be a studio behind them... there is no mention of budget, whether or not they have a script.... if this is a wish project or something that they have everything in place for. Let's hope!