A friend of mine posted this on his blog:
The word on the street is that the Atlas Shrugged movie project is in “turnaround” status. That means that the producers (Baldwin Entertainment Group) have given up trying to make the movie right now, and are willing to sell the rights to someone else (presumably for their accrued development costs).
This is a major turn of events since last year, when the film looked like a sure thing. It’s amazing how fast a project can hit a dead end in the movie business.
Sigh.
UPDATE – JUL 18: I’m removing the name of my friend who originally posted this on his blog, because (due to my relative inexperience with LiveJournal) I was quoting a friends-only entry from his blog.
That said, I have telephoned the original source of this rumor, who is a Rand-admiring movie producer uninvolved in the Atlas Shrugged movie, for additional information.
He pointed out — and verified while we were on the phone — that the Pro version of IMDB lists the movie as “Status: Turnaround.” This status, he says, was posted on June 18th.
“Turnaround,” of course, has a very specific meaning in the film industry — basically, that the producer wants to sell the movie.
So it’s either a typo in the Internet Movie Database or the movie is, in fact, in turnaround.