ZineZone: Douglas Adams has sent poor Arthur Dent to all points of the galaxy and beyond in his fabled series Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Now he's getting ready to send him onto the silver screen! But Douglas is no Hollywood lightweight. He's also fascinated by technology, high tech games,Apple computers, scuba diving, animal extinction, and chickens.

SueDM says: Hi Douglas - welcome to ZineZone and Talk City! What have you been up to these days?

Douglas Adams: The last few months have been dominated by moving from London to California, a little way north of Los Angeles. I'm still working away on yet another draft of my script. I sometimes think I am locked in particular scenes and have been for decades. At times when I think I've had it with these situations, I feel like I have to write it again. At the moment deadlines are not too tricky because the director is making a movie with Robert De Niro. We haven't decided exactly where it will get made. These things will get decided a bit later. I would certainly hope that the location filming for England will be done in England.

guest-Metrosquad says: Is HHGTTG really becoming a movie? When is it planned to come out?

Douglas Adams: It's planned to come out some time after we start making it. ;-) At this point I think the start date looms larger than the finish date, but if we start by February then I would imagine we would have it out for summer, 2001. That's a good year to bring out a science fiction film.

NoAlias says: A movie???!!! How's it going? Will it be the same or different than the radio show? Same or different from the BBC TV show?

Douglas Adams: Each medium that I have taken the story into has caused the story to change in significant ways, so the movie will largely track the book. It's the first book that the movie will specifically contradict. The point here is the best source material for a movie is a short book or even better, a short story, so when people ask me if I am going to put all of the books into one movie, they can't understand the nature of movie making.

guest-beatrice says: Will the movie HHGTTG be as campy as the BBC miniseries?

Douglas Adams: I very much hope not. I hope we will get to make it quality this time, not with cardboard sets that wave in the breeze. An IMAX version is something we are looking at doing in tandem with the regular version.

guest-Notzaphod says: Who's directing?

Douglas Adams: Jay Roach is directing, who is best known for the two Austin Powers movies, and a new movie just about to open called Mystery Alaska.

guest-Notzaphod says: When and where are auditions for the movie?