Hitchhiker Begins Filming

Yesterday Disney started filming The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in London, England. Disney has also announced an official release date of June 3, 2005. That doesn’t seem too long to wait for what looks to be a great adaptation, especially since the original author Douglas Adams also wrote the script.

The first shots were of a religious cult leader played by John Malkovich, which is the first time this character appears in the story. 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 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.