This thread was just posted at multiverse.org:
http://www.multiverse.org/fora/showthread.php?t=4940Moorcock himself says...
I was, as it happens, talking to the producers only a week or so ago. Now that work is finished on The Golden Compass they're re-engaging rapidly, they said, with the Elric movie. We've changed approach once or twice as far as the production is concerned -- I think for the better. The 'fantasy noir' idea is paramount at the moment. I'm afraid I can't say much else at this stage, but we're still moving slowly ahead! There's no doubt that the relative failures of some over-budget fantasy movies like Riddick, Van Helsing, even Kong, made Universal take the movie off the front burner for a while, but since then they've had successes with dark, more thoughtful fantasy movies, including Pan's Labyrinth and Children of Men, which, in my view, Elric is closer to in mood.
There has been talk of an Elric movie since the 1980s, but this time it feels, somehow...different. I suppose it's been because of just how Moorcockish the movies have been lately. PAN'S LABYRINTH obviously has the Moorcock atmosphere down pat, certainly. And the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movies are reminiscent of early, ERB-inspired Moorcock: the ship of the dead that emerges from the water was seen first in one of the Prince Corum books, the emphasis on shipboard swashbuckling (hell, Moorcock dedicated the first Erkose book to Douglas Fairbanks), and the idea of an enemy whose weakness is his heart is outside his body, kept in a safe place, are Moorcockish ideas.
Plus, it looks like these Weitz guys are hardcore Elric fanboys, fighting tooth and nail to get this movie made. You can stop a director on the rise from making their dream movie...but NOT forever.