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The first creative casualty resulting from the Sony hack ("The Interview" notwithstanding) is a project that's not even being produced by Sony; it's the New Regency film adaptation of Guy Delisle's graphic novel "Pyongyang."

In case you missed it, Sony Pictures has been forced to cancel the theatrical release of The Interview after hackers have released a catastrophic trove of private emails and scripts, and threatened to bomb theaters showing the film—and theater owners began saying they wouldn’t carry it. The film follows a pair of bumbling journalists sent to North Korea to assassinate Kim Jong Un, and apparently, Supreme Leader did not like this plot line.

The repercussions of this Hollywood disaster will be felt for years to come, but one piece of collateral damage was a planned adaptation of Pyongyang, Guy DeLisle’s graphic novel about his two months spent in the North Korean capital working on an animation project. New Regency has pulled the plug on the project which was to have starred Steve Carrell and be directed by Gore Verbinski from a Steve Conrad script. However the log line for the movie bears little resemblance to the book that I read:

Based on the graphic novel by Guy Delisle, “Pyongyang” is a paranoid thriller about a Westerner’s experiences working in North Korea for a year.

Delisle spent two months living in North Korea’s capital, where according to Wikipedia, he struggled with the difficulties of outsourcing and the bureaucracy of the totalitarian closed state. He was authorized to bring Aphex Twin CDs, Gitanes cigarettes, Hennessy cognac and a copy of George Owell’s novel “1984,” but left the country with no expectations to ever return.

Well, for now you can still just go buy his books and not worry about getting your emails hacked, so show the terrorists haven’t won by getting a copy of Pyongyang!

Satellite image of North andSouth Korea at night Given North Korea's isolation from the rest of the world, it's surprising how many scholarly books have been published on the country's economy, politics, history, and culture. The growing number of refugee memoirs depicting North Korea's cradle-to-grave propaganda machine and its oppression of civilians is perhaps less [...]

Tweet It seems that Hollywood studios are now so desperate for material that they are turning to smart, nuanced graphic novels with intelligence and insight for material. To wit: New Regency has optioned PYONGYANG, the first in French-Canadian cartoonist Guy Delisle’s acclaimed series of travelogues/social commentary. The book concerns his sojourn in North Korea while working [...]

Burmese Artists

I’m currently reading Guy Delisle’s Burma Chronicles.  He has supplemental photos and some samples of Burmese cartoonists on his site.

Guy Delisle, traveller, animator, comic book artist, and author of the graphic novel, Burma Chronicles - is now blogging from Jerusalem where his wife is stationed with Doctors Without Borders.

Beautiful sketches and fun comics. I suspect a book will come out of this…

via Drawn & Quarterly