BOOKS ABOUT TO BECOME MOVIES
THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Status: Set for Australian release January 10, 2013.
Who's Involved: Baz Luhrmann directs a star-stacked cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton and Tobey Maguire.
Why you should read the book first: If Luhrmann's brash and flashy trailer is anything to go by, you may want to better know these characters before they get his larger-than-life melodrama makeover. Beyond a pretty society girl, Daisy was once a romantic, who has since had to lock away her hopes of love. Beyond a mysterious man of the moment, Gatsby is a pining youth and a dangerous criminal. Beyond his bluster and snobbery, Tom is a man who wants to punish the world for not being everything he dreamed of. These are layers that may be lost in Luhrmann's glossy translation, along with Fitzgerald's complicated relationship with wealth and the American Dream. Like his narrator Nick Carraway, the author was fascinated yet repulsed by affluence and its aftermath, and never is his conflict felt so strongly as in this incredible novel. Not only is The Great Gatsby a captivating battle of past versus present, old money versus new, love versus obligation, and dreams versus reality. It's also a book that is worth reading not just for its tragic hero, but for every one of the characters caught in this crushing embrace of New York society.
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