>>>I have attended many lectures so it is no big deal to me.

I have attended many lectures, too. Most of them were boring.There's supposed to be a difference between the experience of sitting through a lecture and the experience of watching a movie. Above everything else, the latter is supposed to be entertaining.

>>>I would only have the entire speech as an option, or optional DVD.

The entire movie should be direct-to-DVD.

>>>How it would be different than an audio book is that it would be in the voice of the actor who plays the part,

Unless it is the same actor who is hired to record the audiobook.

>>>and I expect it could be enhanced with regular fading in and out of the actor speaking in the microphone and scenes from the previous movies and footage of decimated cities like Detroit, or unruly crowds like the OWS protests etc.

In other words, images we've all seen before. This is "entertainment"?

>>>I fail to see why you should object.

I never said I objected.

>>>What difference to you will it make if there is a special edition that I and others are willing to pay for?

None. So let's hope the producers understand that Part 3, like Parts 1 and 2, preaches to the converted. That's not exactly an effective strategy for reaching new people.

>>>check out youtube. ARI has already done some interesting things with Galt's speech.

Oh, beautiful! If there's already a FREE version of the speech online, why should I (or any other moviegoer) pay to hear it as part of a movie? It would be the SAME speech, with (perhaps) some different images. Big deal.

>>>there are many who find the speech so essential,

No screenwriter, filmmaker, or producer who knew his craft would find a long didactic speech from a didactic novel "essential" to the process of telling a story on screen.

>>>they are willing to listen again and again,

The producers had better hope that these same people are willing to buy tickets again and again. Otherwise, Part 3 will flop as badly as Parts 1 and 2.

>>>Darren. you haven't answered. read AS?

There's very little about Objectivism and Ayn Rand you can teach me, khalling, that I didn't already learn years ago, after having read Atlas Shrugged three times, heard Miss Rand lecture live at the Ford Hall Forum twice, attended Peikoff's multi-lecture course on "The Philosophy of Objectivism" in New York City (with Miss Rand often in attendance — sitting next to her husband, Frank O'Connor — and conducting the post-lecture Q&A), and last but not least: getting her personal autograph on my own hardcover version of AS.

In fact, I personally met a number of people from her "inner circle": Peikoff, his future wife Cynthia, Harry Binzwanger, Allan Blumenthal, George Reisman (I attended his NYC lectures on economics), Robert Hessen and his wife Bea.

So go ahead, khalling. Teach me. I'm waiting.

Actually, the first movie didn't break even. And neither did the second.

DVD sales and on-demand simply weren't strong enough to get this thing out of the ditch.

I dare John Aglialoro to come on to this site and show us the numbers.

He won't, because he knows both movies ended deep in the red. He's hoping that if he gets part III out, he too can tap into the ARI money fountain that's kept Ayn Rand's books afloat for so long with artificially created demand.

Astroturf.

Take away the bulk buys of the ARI, and you've got pretty much zilch.

>>>It needs to be brief, concise and to the point--if only to be absorbed by as many open minds as possible.

It needs to be brief, and concise and to the point because that's the nature of a DRAMATIC presentation in a FILM, as opposed to a purely DIDACTIC presentation in a BOOK. Right? Because a reader can put the book down after reading for an hour, then come back to it a bit later. Can an audience member in a movie theater do that? No. He has to stare at a screen for 2 hours, so the filmmakers had better give him a good reason for doing that as opposed to looking at his email on his smartphone. If they can't — or won't — then they shouldn't make a movie for theatrical release. They should go direct-to-DVD or not make a movie at all.

>>> so a movie is much more palatable and more likely to be seen.

In theory. In fact, very few people paid to see the movies because the word-of-mouth reviews were so bad (understandably). Conversely, lots of people still pay to buy copies of the eleven-hundred page novel.

>>. I would like a special edition DVD with the entire speech option.

How would that differ from an audiobook version?

Are you "Howling Mad Murdoch" from the A-Team?

>>>If AS was easy to put onto the big screen it would have been done in the '70s.

Nice non sequitur. What does "easy to put onto the big screen" have to do with the decade of the 1970s?

Rand herself had started to adapt the novel into a television miniseries but she lost interest in the project. The reason it was never developed for the screen (big or little) after hear death was that Peikoff simply refused to let it be done, despite several fine screenwriters attempting to do so.

>>The fact is the message transcends all other considerations.

If that's the case, then the message also transcends the consideration of adapting it for screen in the first place. Leave the novel alone and don't attempt to make a movie of it. On the other hand, if you do decide to adapt the novel for film, then the first consideration is NOT the "message" of the novel, but the constraints imposed on the nature of storytelling itself by the medium of film. FIRST respect the nature of the medium; THEN worry about sending a "message." The producers of AS got it backward, which is why both films failed commercially, and why they felt it necessary to do something embarrassing like recasting the entire thing. They recast it, by the way, in an attempt to make AS-II more commercially successful than AS-I, NOT because they felt the original actors weren't getting the "message" across.

>> Shortening the speech to appeal to those with limited attention spans is nonsense. Let the producers, director, and actor figure out how to present the speech in a way that holds the attention of the audience.

I love the contempt you hold for the paying public. Why make a movie in that case? Anyway, producers, directors, and actors, already have lots of filmmaking history to show them how to present long boring speeches in a way that holds the attention of the audience:

Shorten it.