Nick Goldsmith en Garth Jennings, producer en regisseur van The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy werden een tijdje geleden ondervraagd over dit grote project.

[eng]The script has three elements: material that we know and love from the books and the radio scripts; new stuff that Douglas wrote in his various drafts; and whatever new stuff Karey Kirkpatrick has had to put in to make the whole thing fit properly. How much new stuff are we going to see?

Garth: "There's an awful lot of new Douglas stuff. There's some wonderful inventions - characters and creatures and devices. I don't think we've put anything in. Karey's main role has been ordering and editing and making sense of it. We never once had to invent something. I don't think you ever get projects like this where you could never be stuck for an idea. If you're ever concerned about 'What are we going to do here?' you just go back to the original material or back to the hard drive and there's always an answer there. Even in production design, if ever we've been stuck for an idea or not sure what to do, we just go back to the books or the radio series and it's all there. There's always an answer, which is really fabulous."

Robbie: "It is important to stress that this is not a literal adaptation of the novel, just as the novel was not a literal adaptation of the original radio series - and indeed neither was the TV series nor the computer game. It's not like Lord of the Rings, where you have a book and you want to turn that into a film which is as faithful to its source as possible. There is no single definitive Hitchhiker's Guide story, and never has been. The book, radio, TV, game - they all share some characters and plot elements but they add, remove, change or re-order others. Douglas' various script drafts did the same. And that's another difference from Lord of the Rings. All the fundamental changes from previous versions were made, in this instance, by the original author. Every step of the way, the team who have been working on this since Douglas died have been striving to be faithful to the spirit of Hitchhiker's: its humour, its intelligence and its astonishing inventiveness. To use a great phrase I heard from an executive in Hollywood, there really is no need to 'put a hat on a hat.' It was Douglas who showed us the way for the new ideas in the film, they are fundamentally his."

You said how much you enjoyed the script, but is there any pressure to dumb it down from up high in the studio?

Garth: "No, that's been the wonderful thing. I kind of answered this indirectly earlier with the fact that I was worried that's what they would have done. But we found that everyone's gone out of their way to give it a structure that makes it a satisfying film but not lose any of the intelligence. I think people care about it a lot, even people at the studio who won't actually be working on it directly are so passionate about it. No-one wants to screw up something that they all love so much."

Robbie: "I think that's really worth stressing - that it's everybody involved. Obviously there are issues and things that need to be resolved but we're not swimming against the tide of Studio indifference or misunderstanding of the material. Disney, Spyglass, everybody involved is determined to let it breathe and allow it to come to the fore."

One of the great things about Hitchhiker's are the memorable characters who crop up for one or two lines, like Gag Halfrunt. Are you including these and are you having as much fun designing and casting them as with the main characters?

Garth: "That's a good one. Yes, it's great. Gag is definitely something that is in the script and we hope to keep, and there are an awful lot of those things. But not just that. One of the things for us is all the little visual ideas that we love so much. I won't tell you what they are but there's an awful lot of things that we've been able to weave into the scenes. Hopefully people who don't know the material will just think they're fabulous and people that do will go, 'My God, that's so-and-so!'"[/eng]

Lees hier het hele interview.