Roger's Film Notes

Now here's an "Episode Three" I'm really looking forward to:

"Left Behind: World War III," scheduled for release later this year, is based on the last part of the book "Tribulation Force" by LaHaye and Jenkins. It picks up a year and a half after millions of people have vanished off the face of the earth, and the world is now controlled by Nicolae Carpathia (Gordon Currie), a self-proclaimed Messiah, and his One World Government. Like most of America, the president of the United States, as played by Louis Gossett Jr., wholeheartedly supports Nicolae’s global leadership. But after an attempt on his life, the president begins to suspect this new world order.

Journalist Buck Williams (Kirk Cameron from "Growing Pains" fame, reprising his earlier Left Behind role), who became a born-again Christian toward the end of the first film, believes that Nicolae is actually the prophesied Antichrist. With the aid of Buck and militia spy Carolyn Miller (Jessica Steen), the president uncovers this new government's horrific plans for genocide and quickly joins the very resistance he had sacrificed so much to destroy.

The producers of the film, the LaLonde brothers, say they got some financing from Sony Pictures, so the film will be more polished than the previous two installments in the series, and that Kirk Cameron has grown into the role of "Journalist Buck Williams," the man who brings the President of the United States to faith. (As opposed to Old Grandad, the man who brought George Bush to faith.)

But shouldn't that be "Blogger Buck Williams," since bloggers are the new, less incompetent journalists?

Actually, the most interesting bit of the story is that those chumps Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins -- if you can call men who made multi-millions from poorly written books "chumps" -- sold the movie rights before they realized the books would be so popular. LaHaye and Jenkins sued the production company on a breach of contract theory to get their rights back ("Use the courts, Tim. Use the courts"):

Among other charges, the creators of the books, which are inspired by biblical prophecies, were dissatisfied with the distribution techniques Cloud Ten was utilizing.

And they got their asses handed to them, presumably by men in black robes who are out to destroy people of faith. LaHaye and Jenkins will have to settle for getting the LaLondes kicked off the Rapture invite list.

(Thanks to cinophile "mw" for the link.)