Advertisemen
Dmitry Glukhovsky's end-time bestseller "Metro 2033" was actually being filmed in the US. Since it has not gotten on in Hollywood, however, now wants to Russia itself to try a cinema adaptation.
For years now, attempts have been made to bring Dmitry Glukhovsky's 2005 cult sci-fi novel "Metro 2033" to the big screen. The most recent and so far most concrete attempt to launch filming failed at the end of 2018 because the author was completely dissatisfied with the approach of the Hollywood studio MGM, which wanted to Americanize the Russian history. To prevent this, Glukhovsky now starts a new attempt in his native Russia.
"WORLD CLASS BLOCKBUSTER"
As Variety has learned, now several production studios of the largest Russian media group Gazprom Media will take the matter together. According to producer Valery Fedorovich, the company has great box-office potential in the material, so much money will be invested in the "Metro 2033" filming and its worldwide marketing as in none of his previous projects.
Of course, he does not call exact sums here, but in the course of the announcement, Glukhovsky promised that he would produce a world-class blockbuster that would astound even connoisseurs of the novel's original. The author himself should be heavily involved in the process as a creative consultant.
The global popularity of the still-growing "Metro" world is indeed quite promising. The novel's opening "Metro 2033" became a bestseller in several countries and brought not only the two official sequels "Metro 2034" and "Metro 2035", but also numerous other books by other authors, which are located in the same universe. However, the franchise also gained international recognition thanks to the successful video game adaptations "Metro 2033", "Metro: Last Light" and "Metro: Exodus", which were released between 2010 and 2019.
KINOSTART 2022
Enough stuff to start a whole movie series would be there anyway. The "Metro" stories are located in a post-apocalyptic near future where a devastating nuclear war has made the Earth's surface uninhabitable. In the Russian capital, Moscow, the few survivors, including the protagonist Artyom, have retreated to the city's sealed underground tunnels, where they have built a new civilization but are also confronted with sinister dangers lurking in the darkness.
Although it is not yet clear who will step in front of and behind the camera for the "Metro 2033" filming, there is already a fixed timetable for the adaptation. This is how the shoot starts in 2020 and the film then celebrates its premiere in Russia on January 1, 2022.