After first being introduced to Douglas Adams one night way back in 1982 while flipping through my limited selection of non-cable TV channels, I became hooked on the TV series based on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I went on to read all his books and still love his quirky and cynical humour.

This film project began 5 years ago and hit a snag with Adams untimely death at the age of 49 in 2001. Filming on the project actually began last year in April of 2004.

As Greg Dean Schmitz at Greg’s Previews reports:

“4/20/04 – Filming did indeed get started yesterday, with the news of the first character created just for this movie, a religious cult leader played by John Malkovich. The standard rules of “introducing new characters for the movie” (generally perceived as a bad thing) don’t really apply here because Douglas Adams himself wrote the script, and he established 20+ years ago a standard of changing things about a bit each time, as he wrote this adventure for radio, books, and TV. It’s not surprising he did it for the movie too.”

Let’s hope the movie proves to be a legacy that would make Douglas Adams proud…

From Yahoo! Movies, the cast list:

Martin Freeman (Arthur Dent), Mos Def (Ford Prefect), Zooey Deschanel (Trillian), Bill Nighy (Slartibartfast), Sam Rockwell (Zaphod Beeblebrox), Warwick Davis (Marvin the Paranoid Robot), John Malkovich (Humma Kavula), Steve Pemberton (Mr. Prosser), Stephen Fry (The Book), Alan Rickman (voice of Marvin)

Find a The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie poster here >>