herman mehlville

I'll be honest, I don't remember hearing about this big budget mini-series of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick before. But If they do it authentically enough, they'll be guaranteed millions of DVD sales and rentals by high school and college kids who damned sure aren't going to read the book for English class.

It's being put together by Germany's RTL, Austria's ORF and Robert Halmi's RHI. That means it's an RTLORFRHI production, which makes me ROFLMAO. Unfortunately, viewers in the USA are SOL as it currently has no network deal here.

That could change with this big casting news. The $25 million Moby-Dick mini-series has brought William Hurt and Ethan Hawke aboard. They'll be playing the obsessed Captain Ahab and defiant first mate Starbuck, respectively. It looks like there'll be a lot of CGI and effects representing the whale, which is a shame because we could have had a lot of politically incorrect fun casting that role. Maybe SYTYCD's Mary Murphy could be the voice of the whale, which would explain Ahab's obsession to shut it up permanently.