One pertinent question is how Hollywood will finesse John Galt’s 150-page speech (Julian Sanchez suggests a DVD extra.) Perhaps it’s a good thing that Rand is gone, for the IMDb says she would have quibbled mightily over something like that; from the trivia page for The Fountainhead:

Ayn Rand was furious when she heard that Howard Roark’s speech at the trial was being trimmed, chiefly because it was considered long, rambling and confusing, especially to Gary Cooper who didn’t understand it. She got the studio to make sure that the speech was untouched and in its entirety in the finished product.

For what it’s worth, the scene plays well, and the movie is pretty good. I think it’s especially amusing that Cooper didn’t get it, though, as Hollywood is not especially known as a hotbed of Objectivism. (Does the support of two top stars indicate that Rand’s religion philosophy will supplant Kabbalah as the latest fad?)

So what kind of cultural penetration can we expect from an Objectivist blockbuster? For one, I wouldn’t assume that the movie would accurately reflect the gist of the novel; many who read Rand, usually in high school, are attracted most by the staunch individualism, and I think most celebrities probably operate at the same level. Further, any Objectivism that did leak through might be of a strain too virulent to be practical, a common complaint. I was having lunch with a couple of Libertarians one day when they lamented that their crowd had too many loonies; what’s more, one could make a safe bet, they said, that the loonies came to libertarianism through Rand.
So, how about a biopic of Bastiat?