The Curmudgeon

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Saturday, July 01, 2006

News 2020

Playhill to film dictated book

Veteran film-maker Lucas Playhill has announced plans to make a film version of a novel by notorious Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The 74-year-old director of hard-hitting classics such as The Terminal says his next project will be a film of Zabibah and the King, or "Zabibah wal Malik" as Arabs refer to it.

The book tells the story of a beautiful heroine who runs out on her cruel husband and becomes the confidante of a powerful king.

"I was attracted to the book because of its huge cinematic potential," Mr Playhill said yesterday. "It really does have everything you look for in a movie - excitement, tragedy, emotion, spectacle. And the characters, too - this is real archetypal stuff here."

Mr Playhill said he was not concerned about accusations of glorifying the Saddam regime. "The history of literature is full of great writers who held political views I wouldn't necessarily agree with," he said.

"But when you make a movie you generally just ignore history and stuff and concentrate on the universal values."

The ruthless dictator, who was notorious for his ruthless dictatorship, ruled Iraq with an iron hand until the country was democratised in 2003.

He wrote several romantic novels, including Zabibah and the King, which were best-sellers in Iraq before the cultural life of the country was improved by the introduction of western values and the opportunification of Iraqis to read the works of Ann Coulter and Dan Brown.

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