Bring it on!!!

This is good news!

I agree. Need to illustrate the genesis of today's condition. To do that it should start in the 50's and sort of fast forward through the decades to "The Day After Tomorrow" to give the younger audience a basis for what happened to get us to where we are today

who are all these people in here? lol

I think it should be "day after tomorrow" based on how Americans imagined the future world from the 1950s perspective. Maybe just without the flying cars...

Hopefully this becomes a reality and the real education will start!

Story should take place in the 21st century aka the day after tomorrow.

Chicago, the day after tomorrow. Corrupt Chicago (and Illinois!) is on the verge of becoming the next Detroit. Its a perfect setting.

This story is deserving of House of Cards level talent. Selling out to anything less (like was done with the movie trilogy) will cause more harm than good.

If someone like J. Michael Straczynski can be employed to do it...

Why not set it in the present day? Aren't we interested in informing people about what is happening all around them as we speak?

It should be a period piece because today, nothing has a niche comparable to railroads in the 50's...and I wouldn't want to have to make Dagny a CEO in some other industry. It would change too much of the story.

Ideally, for me, I would prefer it to be set in the period of the book. But, more importantly, I want Rand's message to reach as many people as possible, and I think the best chance for that to happen is if the show is set during a day after tomorrow period. Then hopefully, the younguns will give the show a chance and not change the channel as soon as they see a fedora or a rotary phone. Hey, can we get Hugh Laurie cast?

Indeed.

I've said all along a series would have had water-cooler Magic. Every week people would have been lured in by word of mouth and waited breathlessly for the following week's episode.
The trilogy lost that magic being cut up into three parts so far apart in time. The change of cast just added to the non-excitement.

I would have loved a movie/TV mini-series set in the time of the book -- but then I would also have loved to have Lauren Bacall star as Dagny Taggart. Given that major deficit -- just who could fill Dagny Taggart's stiletto pumps? -- I must agree with the vast flood of comments here and vote for a day-after-tomorrow setting. My favorite of the three AS movies was the first, where we saw casual demonstrations of cutting-edge technology taken for granted [has anyone seen the YouTube short on a world made of glass?] The John Galt line would be a high-speed, or even a maglev train. Hey, Taggart Transcontinental could be a railroad/airline conglomerate.

Could we please, please have actors who can play the right age? This is a revolution fomented by people barely in their thirties! Having actors a decade or two older in key roles [Eric Allen Kramer, Joaquin de Almeida? Really.] is just wrong, wrong, wrong in so many ways. It would be so very important to demonstrate that this -- Objectivism -- is not an old-fogey shtick, but a truly revolutionary, never really been tried before, way out there way of organizing a society and an economic system, something that today's youth and young adults, mired in Federal Reserve joblessness and Obamacare submission to the system, could look at and say, yes, that would be leagues better than what's being force fed to me today.

And would somebody please get Dagny out of those peplum-jacketed suits and into some good Armani? Or just hire the costumer who put Jodie Foster in those great suits in Elysium. Chief Operating Officers don't wear the cutesy suits they kept putting Dagny into in those AS movies.

All in all, I can't wait.

But with ties to the start in the 50's.

While a mass-appeal TV show might START to spread the word, I'm afraid it would be numbed by ratings and network requirements quickly. But I'm for 'day after tomorrow' setting. (The basis is timeless).

I'd love to see it as the day after tomorrow. The impact of AS carried into today would be so powerful to not just youth, but so many middle aged that see the problems of today but can't seem to be able to connect the dots or see below the surface. The initial opening sequence might depict an original brief transition from those of the 50's or so to their children, with a few elders, carrying on into today's efforts. Take it away from the fantasy of the 50's and move it into the realities of today, and still moving slowly to change.
The series could well involve a trifold compilation of Gulchers hiding in plain sight, those in the govt/bureaucracy side pushing their plans, and those learning the lessons of the Gulchers.
Room for idealist/intellectual, heroic activist, wrong headed anti-liberty collectivist/hidden institutional/bureaucratic govt, and the masses caught in the propaganda both trying to understand and also burying their heads.
So many possibilities. Two other successful series come to mind, the first Son's of Anarchy and the second Shameless on Showtime. They convey the under currents of today's life from the view of those lives struggling on a day to day effort to not just exist, but looking for or hoping for something different--often without realizing the hope while suffering setbacks and finding small gains.

This has me excited and is something I'd really love to see.

continuing my comment-ACCURATELY- then set it in the 50s. If modified as the film why not modify it to the present/furture.
A R T

If it is done according to the book ACCURATELY

All the drama from the books was drained from the movies. Essential concepts to the plot were not developed leaving the motivations of the characters incomprehensible. Atlas Shrugged as a novel has the feel of legend and myth - scenes such as Valhalla and the legend of Atlantis were omitted - will they be included? Who will do the screenplays?

Who will direct? The drama was drained form the movies so that key dramatic scenes were set off like wet squibs. Someone needs to acquire the one quarter of the Atlas screenplay written by Ayn Rand before she died, to see how she visualized AS as a MOVIE.

Who will hire the actors? Many characters in the movies were inappropriate, such as the Dagny of movie two, Hoyt Axton in movie one. Francisco in movie three.

Who will act in it?

“How does a full blown television series sound!?”

Sounds great! I think it would take a miniseries with 20-to-26 one-hour episodes to do the book justice. I think it would be helpful if each episode tells a self-contained story within an overarching story arc. Many successful television series have used this approach.

“Should the Atlas Shrugged television series be a period piece set in the 1950s or should it take place, as Ayn Rand alluded to, ‘the day after tomorrow?’"

I vote for “period piece.” The book had a very specific political and cultural setting within which all the parts fit together seamlessly. For example, the exposure of Hank Rearden’s affair with Dagny would have had much more severe social consequences in 1957 than would be the case in 2015.

Adapting Ayn Rand’s novel to the present day would be the equivalent of taking a 1950s era automobile and retrofitting it with today’s technological advances such as airbags, seat belts, cd/mp3 players and GPS. It can be done, but the results would look awkward. I think that this problem showed up to some extent in the movie trilogy, and would be an even bigger distraction in a longer and more detailed television series.

Today’s readers do not appear to have a problem with accepting the novel as Ayn Rand originally wrote it, and I don’t think television viewers would have a problem with a miniseries that remained faithful to the novel. There are many popular books, movies and television series that take place in alternative past and present worlds. The success of the “superhero” franchises, for example, demonstrates that there is a sizable market for this type of entertainment, and Ayn Rand’s protagonists certainly qualify as “superheroes,” who succeed using reason rather than superhuman powers.

Based on the differences between the books and how the movies were done, I think that it could work either way. However, since what Ayn Rand wrote about has taken place already, I believe it might be best as a series spread out over multiple generations. Since its planned to be a mini series of indeterminate length, how about the start be as the books start in the time of the 1950s as America was at its height of world power with the initial mentions of "Who is John Galt?" And the elders of each prominent family of each main character. Then moving at a pace over the duration of the series, we get to see how the government and like minded people begin to influence the laws as well as how each very successful innovative business moguls family is at constant odds as more and more "average people" begin to want more because they cannot or will not try to succeed and reply on the hard work of those who create and produce and because of that become justifiably wealthy. This causes upheavals by those in politics who require the majority to be on their side to achieve their own power become those over generations of politicians end up with the reveal of John Galt and his message of "stopping the motor of the world" and perhaps move a bit further to show all of the truly great people he has accumulated come out and back into the open again, but now they have all the power of creation, reparation, and crisis management on their side. And the series could end better than the movie did by showing the whole world in revolt and starting a new government as stated by those who wrote our declaration of independence and constitution...that when the current system of government is broken or corrupt, tear it down and build a new one. And it's the elders as well as their children who were living in secret in a Utopian society who set forth the new Declaration and Constituion based on the single rule set down by John Galt.

I believe in this way, more of the book could be used and the length of the series could hopefully be determined by how long it takes to fully tell the whole story through at least five decades and not solely based on budgetary constraints to get the whole story crammed into two or three two hour movies. This is my suggestion and I hope I typed as I am thinking it. If others have presented similar ideas, I'm glad and please don't think I'm copying anyone else as I've not read any other suggestions yet. Thanks for your time, Neal V.

PS - I've seen a few comments about the use of trains as it was the best way to travel at the time Ayn Rand wrote her novel. But I do think that using the Trains and railway system in this country which now literally look like arteries and veins in a human body...Rail transport should be the only affordable means of transportation as in the movie showing gas prices over $40.00/gallon which is VERY relevant to the world today. It cost far more to move far less on a plane than in a train, plus the symbol of the train able to use coal, wood, petroleum, and then even the atmospheric engine John Galt designed. It would quite difficult to use planes as the hub. And if all things were equal to the book and movies...the setting back to rail transport for nearly everything would make even more sense on showing how the work for the sake of others and the disappearance of the best minds of the worlds population to the Gulch would be further reinforced. In comparison to flammable liquids created by man, going back to just being able to create fire with wood as all those who know or knew how to make fuels have disappeared and those left only can make a simple wooden fire.

That is great news! For a long time now I thought this was needed, but didn't know it was actually being considered until now.

One thing I liked least about the recent trilogy was that it cut so much material. Not just the philosophy and its arguments, but also some really good juicy story lines were completely cut. I could easily see 30 one-hour (or 45-minute, or whatever) episodes being made, one for each chapter of the book. That would allow time to present even small details and develop them throughout the series. Maybe it could even include Galt's entire speech.

I think we need a good series set in the period, but I also like the idea of making new modern versions every now and then. If it is really going to be taken seriously and done well, perhaps this is the best way to have a "definitive" version set in the 50s. I look forward to hearing more about this.

Atlas Shrugged was *made* for the Dieselpunk aesthetic. Frankly I thought it was one of the huge things that the movies got wrong. I would prefer to see it set in a timeless period with Art Deco/Dieselpunk trappings, fashions reminiscent of the 40s updated with a modern flair, and similiar style cues.