George Orwell’s seminal literary work 1984 could be getting a new movie adaptation. Imagine Entertainment, the production house run by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, and LBI Entertainment, the banner run by Julie Yorn, are teaming up to develop a new take on the 20th century classic.
The book is set in a dystopian society in a perpetual state of war, which in turn leads to a state of paranoia. Propaganda, surveillance, mind control and cult of personality — concepts seen in totalitarian and fascist states such as Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union — were taken to new levels in the book written in 1948 and published in 1949.
The story centers on Winston Smith, who works for a government branch called the Ministry of Truth, where he alters facts and histories but secretly harbors desires of rebellion (as well as desires of a forbidden love affair). The ideas in the novel became hugely influential in the worlds of politics and art, with the author’s name eventually becoming an adjective (Orwellian).