More screenplay progress

I've gotten, I think, about half-way through the screenplay now. Progress is slow, but steady. Just give it time...

Screenplay Progress

I've been working on the screenplay-- I have the first couple scenes written. My goal is to keep the movie true to the book, as much as possible, keeping much of the dialogue often as direct quotations from the source material, but I'm also trying to make it more film-friendly, juggling situations and characters around.

One of the initial changes I've made is that I'm starting the movie near the end of the story-- with Utterson and Poole breaking into Jekyll's laboratory where they believe Hyde is hiding after having murdered the good doctor. This is more of a grabber intro than the place the book starts, and hopefully will get the audience interested right off the bat. From there, the story back-tracks to the beginning, as if to show the audience how they got to that point, and the events leading up to that confrontation.

Another change I've made is to do away with the character of Enfield in "The Story of the Door" segment. He strikes me as a more-or-less useless character, and merely a means of carrying information. I've instead extended the role of Lanyon to include this first confrontation with the person of Hyde.

I'm also trying to build Jekyll himself into the story a bit more, so that the audience gets a chance to get to know him before the whole shocker of an ending. I've added an extremely brief conversation in where the major theme (the dual nature of man) is mentioned and debated, in a sort-of teaser of what is to come. I hope to be able to weave Jekyll's philosophy into the story, leading up, of course, to it's inevitable consoquences.

more to come! Stay tuned.

--Josh