Fernando Meirelles to direct screen adaptation of the best selling novel BLINDNESS.

This isn’t exactly hot of the press, but I’ve just found out about it a few days ago and gathered all the information I could about it. Thought it might be a good idea to share it.

The next film of Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles (CITY OF GOD, THE CONSTANT GARDENER) is the long awaited movie adaptation of the book BLINDNESS by the Nobel Prize winner Portuguese writer José Saramago. Meirelles had already tried back in 1997 to get the rights to make a movie version of the book, but was denied by the writer that thought that it would be difficult to translate into images a book that deals with blindness.

Two years later Canadian actor-writer-director Don McKellar (LAST NIGHT) took a trip to the Lanzarote Island where the Portuguese writer lives and assured him that they did not intend to turn the movie into a gore fest, Saramago’s biggest fear. After that an agreement was easily arranged and Canadian production company Rhombus Media finally got the rights to the movie adaptation. Later on Fernando Meirelles was offered the chance to helm the project and accepted immediately, Don McKellar is in charge of the script adaptation of the book.

The book tells the story of an inexplicable and incurable plague of blindness, which starts by affecting a man while he is in traffic and spreads through the entire country. As the affected by the epidemic are placed in quarantine, in inhuman conditions, and the civil services start to fail, we follow the path of the woman of a doctor, the only person who is not affected by the disease that blinds everyone else. The novel shows us the complete fall of society that because of the blindness looses everything that it considers as civilization. Blindness shows the profound humanity of those who are forced to trust each other when they’re physical senses abandon them.

The film will be a co-production between production companies Rhombus Media, Brazil’s O2filmes, Japan's Bee Vine Pictures and England’s Potboiler Productions. The budget is set at 20 million dollars US. The shooting will star in early 2007 between locations in Toronto and São Paulo and the movie is expected to be released in March 2008.

During the presentation of the project during the Toronto Film Festival Meirelles joked that Rhombus Media were way more persistent that him, the funny thing is that the project went back into his hands.

Don McKellar commented on the writing process: “If I just retell the story and transform the blind into zombies, the movie will be a mistake it will seem like a genre film, of horror or action, with a sub-plot of vengeance that would provide an excuse to use a lot of graphical violence, like it happens in a lot of American films. That wouldn’t be faithful to the original work. The essential subject of the book is human dignity. And how the artifices that we as society use to keep it are very fragile.”

This is what José Saramago had to say about the project and director Fernando Meirelles involvement: “After seeing his two films I didn’t hesitate, I’m sure the story I wrote is in very good hands. Between so many directors that are out there the production company choose him and I am happy with that. I’m convinced he’ll do a good movie. I also liked the idea that it is an international production without a dominant voice and that the movie did not fell in the hands of a major Hollywood studio.”