"Parts 1 and 2 stuck to the novel, yet they were failures with audiences and critics. How do you explain it?"

Because no screenplay can really actually stick to a novel. Even a novel as thin as, say, Jerzy Kosinski's "Being There" gets compressed. It takes about eight hours straight to read "The Great Gatsby." Any movie shorter than eight hours has left something out.

No screenplay can truly stick to a novel. This is news to some people, especially when the particular novel is their substitute for the Holy Writ.

Rand is justifiably known for hitting her reader over the head with a crowbar for page after page after page, especially when it comes to her ideology. That's why she was so ill-suited as a novelist rather than an essayist. And that's why the most infamous chapter in the book has one guy not letting anyone else interrupt him for three hours - beyond parody as bad novel-writing.

Now, if the people posting here were really serious about "first and foremost, you've got to get the ideology across," they'd be clamoring for the Galt speech in its entirety. Anything else would be a regrettable compromise, right? But there's no chance that's going to happend. Yet the Galt does represent a serious quandary for the producers. How much should they include? Which parts should they cut? I don't think for example that anybody would particularly miss her cod-Aristotle noodling about existence (except for those who know enough Aristotle to find it as sophomoric as I do). But the line about "His time is over" -- that's gotta stay, if only because that's as far as most rational people make it into the blablablah.

So the reaction is going to go into two camps. The ones who get so starry-eyed over hearing an actor say "Mr. Thomspon will not be addressing you tonight" that they won't care which parts of the speech are included or excluded, and the ones who are going to insist that the lines supporting Rand Dogmatic Point 38.4 subparagraph 129 were inexcusably left out AND THE ENTIRE SPEECH WEAKENED IRREMEDIABLY AS A RESULT, HOW COULD YOU! HOW COULD YOU!

So it's a problem. A big, big, big problem within the ranks of Randites. Which is to say, in the real world, it's no problem at all.

>>>F. The best thing you could do is get John Aglialoro's ego in line with reality. He makes crappy movies. Does he honestly not know that?

Bingo.

>>>I recommend David Mamet. Yes, he's expensive, but he might do it for less given that he shares many of our ideas.

First, David Mamet only directs material that he has written.

Secon, Mamet has expressed neither sympathy nor antipathy toward Rand and Objectivism. True, he has turned away from liberalism and embraced conservativism and classical liberalism a la Friedrich Hayek, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, and Milton Friedman; but that doesn't suggest he shares your ideas, especially since Rand (and various Objectivist spokespersons) have expressed disagreement and sometimes great hostility toward Hayek and Friedman.

>>>Stick to the novel and it will be a total success.

Parts 1 and 2 stuck to the novel, yet they were failures with audiences and critics. How do you explain it?

What about this:

Just because a screenplay sticks to a novel doesn't make it a good screenplay. This is true for any novel-to-film adaptation, not just Atlas.

A screenplay is the blueprint of a movie. If the blueprint is flawed, the building you construct using it as a guide will be flawed. Just ask Howard Roark.

I think the real issue is for the production team to come to grips with exactly why the first two failed so badly. You can jump up and down and scream "liberal critics" all you want, but if the films had really delivered the goods, they would have thrived, not died.

About half a decade ago a self-financed independent film company named "Premise" came along, with a simple formula: ideology, ideology, ideology. They released one film - a boring hatchet job on Darwin and an advertisement for "intelligent design" with Ben Stein whoring himself out as narrator - which tanked despite a publicity budget several times larger than the production budget. "Premise" has now gone under.

Aglialoro has tapped into the Rand-evangelist-belt and has therefore been able to schnorr enough Other People's Money keep the trilogy going, despite two cataclysmic financial losses. But focus on ideology, ideology, ideology, and you'll end up with "Strike Three." And Ayn Rand's novel will become shorthand for "World's stupidest trilogy."

I think they're about as likely to get David Mamet as they are to get Alfred Hitchcock.