Last spring in a twist that might have amused atheist Rand and Anschutz, the latest deal for an Atlas Shrugged film project had its inception during Mass at the Church of the Good Shepherd, in Beverly Hills.

Baldwin said that a fellow parishioner, Michael Burns — the vice chairman of Lions Gate — approached Baldwin and his wife “right under the nose of the priest”, whispering to them about the rights to Rand’s novel and asking to “meet right away”.

The Baldwins used Hart’s script to interest Jolie in the project, through her manager, Geyer Kosinski. (Kosinski said Jolie declined to comment.) Together the Baldwins, Burns and Kosinski, who is also to be one of the producers, quickly approached Wallace about a new adaptation. And in what Wallace called an uncanny coincidence, he had recently read Atlas for the first time, when he and his college-age son had swapped their favorite books.

“I can pretty much guarantee you that there won’t be a 30-page speech at the end of the movie,” he said. “I have two hours to try to express what Rand believed to an audience, and my responsibility is not only to Ayn Rand, but to the audience, that this be a compelling movie. More people will see the movie than will read Atlas Shrugged. And the movie has to work.”

—KIMBERLY BROWN / NYT