No joke: 40 years. Philip Klein of AmSpec got a sneak peek at the trailer last night and ended up politely panning it, describing the Randian dialogue as stilted and the attempts to link the plot to current events as too strenuous. Fair enough, but realistically is there any way to turn this book into something that would please both mass audiences and Rand devotees? You have to choose, and anyone who loves her enough to make a multi-part film about it will probably choose the devotees.

If anything, to me it feels too generic, like a promo for some new Fox primetime soap about young, beautiful businesspeople. Think “Melrose Place” meets “Wall Street.” Or isn’t that what “Atlas Shrugged” basically is, plus some loooooooong didactic passages about libertarianism? (Haven’t read it!)