LONDON: Hollywood has found its new hot subject matter: the global economic meltdown.

Until recently, the slump had only been bad news for the movie industry as financial backers pulled out of what are often high-risk ventures. But the studios have now had time to develop proposals for pictures about the financial chaos, inspiring a clutch of big-budget films over the next year.

One of the first will be an adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby to be directed by Australian director Baz Luhrmann, best known for his high-octane movies such as Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Moulin Rouge with Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman. Luhrmann says the story, set in champagne-soaked 1920s Long Island with the Great Depression looming, will be made in double-quick time because it can tell today’s audience how we got into the current financial mess.

No casting has yet been mentioned for the title role of Jay Gatsby, most famously played by Robert Redford in the 1974 film version. Neither would Luhrmann, whose film Australia has just been released, give a precise timescale for the picture, saying only: “I’m going to move faster than I have before.”

The political aspects of the economic crisis will be covered next year by documentary polemicist Michael Moore, whose film Fahrenheit 9/11 about the lead-up to the war in Iraq won the Palme d’Or at the 2004 Cannes film festival. It will focus on America’s role in creating the global crisis and is rumoured to take the view that the slump spells the end of the American corporate ‘empire’ supported by the Republican government.

Hinting at the film’s content, Moore recently stated on his website that the root cause of the financial situation was George Bush’s political policy. He wrote: “This so-called ‘collapse’ was triggered by the massive defaulting and foreclosures going on with people’s home mortgages. Do you know why so many Americans are losing their homes? To hear the Republicans describe it, it’s because too many working-class idiots were given mortgages that they really couldn’t afford. Here’s the truth: The number one cause of people declaring bankruptcy is because of medical bills. If we had had universal health coverage, this mortgage ‘crisis’ may never have happened.”

Nick Meyer, chief of Paramount Vantage studio, said: “This is going to tackle what’s going on in the world and America’s place in it.”

It is something of a full circle for Moore, whose first film, Roger and Me, was about the closure of a General Motors factory in his home town of Flint, Michigan, with the loss of 30,000 jobs.

In Britain, too, filmmakers have been inspire by the financial storm. The BBC is due to screen its first drama about the subject in March. Freefall stars Aidan Gillen and Rosamund Pike as bankers whose world implodes.

The film’s writer, Dominic Savage, said it would be a gritty examination of the causes and effects of the slump. “The financial collapse felt like the burning issue of the day and that interests me because we live in the now, not in the past or the future,’ he said. “The emphasis of the film is on human greed that had got out of control the desire in many of us to gain the world, but in doing so, potentially lose our souls.”

Many filmmakers are extremely worried about the downturn. Critics are pointing to the Great Depression, when audiences demanded - and were given escapism and little else.—Dawn/ The Guardian News Service