Lionsgate has kept pretty busy in between counting the profits from its Hunger Games franchise. Having just announced its intent to turn the Now You See Me films into a trilogy, the studio is looking for other things it can expand into franchises. Just last month, we reported that it hired the writer, the director, and the producer of The Hunger Games series to turn The Odyssey into a movie. But apparently the company has already realized the outdated idea that one book should be one movie is hopelessly myopic—and not only that, it looks like that Homer guy actually wrote something else, too! Deadline reports that Lionsgate is thinking about not only turning The Odyssey into more than one film, but also doing the same with The Iliad, another famous text free from the annoying hangups of not being in the public domain.
Talking with analysts, Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer said that the studio’s deal with director Francis Lawrence to make The Odyssey “contemplates more than one movie.” Unfortunately, rather than address the burning question of how a movie deal managed to attain sentience, co-chairman Rob Friedman pressed ahead with some other exciting news. “There’s also this wonderful book called The Iliad, so we’ve been thinking about the opportunities,” he said, presumably eager to plan its summer book club around this little-known gem of a novel.
Production on the first of what now appears to be multiple films won’t start until next year, but it’s good to know there’s nothing out there a studio isn’t eager to turn into a shared cinematic universe, hopefully with additional spinoffs. We look forward to the announcement that the upcoming movie version of Tinker Bell will be set shortly after the events of The Peloponnesian War, only now with a sexy Cyclops as her crime-fighting partner.