The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (film)

Preparations for the premiere of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on Leicester Square.

Bringing The Hitchhiker's Guide to a theatrical version started as early as the 1970s, as documented in The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made by David Hughes. Douglas Adams had been approached by one unnamed producer and separately by the American Broadcasting Company network during the 1970s to turn the book into a film, but Adams refused both offers, as he feared they wanted to turn the work into "Star Wars with jokes".[4] In 1982, Adams signed an option for the film with producers Ivan Reitman, Joe Medjuck and Michael C. Gross, and completed three scripts for them. As part of the rewrites, Medjuck and Gross offered the idea of bringing in either Bill Murray or Dan Aykroyd to play Ford Prefect. However, Aykroyd separately proposed a different story to Reitman, which led to this project becoming the basis for Ghostbusters. This left Adams flustered about the film's development in making sure there was the necessary commitment to the project. However, the event did generate the idea of making Prefect an American as to better draw in that audience.[4]

Movement on the film was quiet until around 2001, when director Jay Roach, using the clout he had gained from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery and Meet the Parents, secured a new deal with Adams and production through Disney.[4] Adams wrote a new script, and Roach sought talent like Spike Jonze to direct, Hugh Laurie to play Arthur, and Jim Carrey as Zaphod, but then Adams died on 11 May 2001. Neither Roach nor the film's executive producer Robbie Stamp wanted to see their work go for naught after Adams' death. Roach brought in Karey Kirkpatrick to complete the screenplay based on Adams' final draft, submitted just before his death. Kirkpatrick used what notes Adams had left, finding that Adams was willing to go off the book's narrative to adapt to the film. He considered his screenplay something in the spirit that Adams had set out based on the whole of Adams' work.[4]

Some time after Adams' death, Roach decided to drop out of the project, and, on recommendation from Jonze – one of several directors asked to do the film – Roach turned to director Garth Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith, collectively known as Hammer & Tongs, to take up the work.[4][5]

In an interview with Slashdot, Stamp stated the following about the cast:[6]

• The hardest character to cast was "the voice of the Guide itself and in the end came back to somebody who was one of the people Douglas himself had wanted, namely Stephen Fry."
• "Douglas himself is on record as saying that as far as he was concerned the only character who had to be British, indeed English, was Arthur Dent."

Stamp also commented on how large a role the studio and screenwriters other than Adams played in making the film:

• "I think that a lot of fans would be surprised to know just how much of a free hand we have been given in the making of this movie. I know how easy it is to see every decision to cut a scene as 'studio' pressure but it was always much more to do with pacing and rhythm in the film itself."
• "The script we shot was very much based on the last draft that Douglas wrote... All the substantive new ideas in the movie... are brand new Douglas ideas written especially for the movie by him... Douglas was always up for reinventing HHGG in each of its different incarnations and he knew that working harder on some character development and some of the key relationships was an integral part of turning HHGG into a movie."

Shooting was completed in August 2004, and the film was released on 28 April 2005 in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and on the following day in Canada and the United States. The pre-title sequence was shot in Loro Parque, Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife.

The film trailer featured voice over work by Stephen Fry as the Guide, describing the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's entry on movie trailers.

An audio collection called "Additional Guide Entries", read by Fry, was released to iTunes to promote the film. The entries were set to music by Joby Talbot and written by Tim Browse and Sean Sollé (with the exception of the How to be Cool entry, which was also co-written by Yoz Grahame).

The "Hitchhiker's Guide to Technology" claims that if you make yourself a cup of tea and attempt to get an object working and the tea goes cold before you finish, you are dealing with technology. Other guides include the Hitchhiker's Guide to Blogging the Hitchhiker's Guide to Deadlines, and the Hitchhiker's Guide to How to be Cool which discusses how an individual can truly be cool, instead of by following crowds, but concludes by suggesting the listener attend a showing of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The Guide to Websites, which only appeared on the official UK movie website, described a website as "a wonderful new invention that allows people you neither know nor care about to inform you what they had for breakfast this morning, without all that tedious mucking about in the postal system". The Guide to Fanboys, written by Touchstone Pictures' copywriters as part of their promotion, only ever appeared as website text. Though released at the same time as the iTunes entries, it was never intended to be recorded and is otherwise unconnected with the Fry/Talbot/Browse works.

Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 60% of 200 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 6.09/10. The site's consensus reads: "A frantic and occasional funny adaptation of Douglas Adams' novel. However, it may have those unfamiliar with the source material scratching their heads."[7] Metacritic gives it 63/100, indicating "generally favourable" reviews.[8] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade "B−" on an A+ to F scale.[9] Empire rated the film four stars out of five and said it was a "very British, very funny sci-fi misadventure that's guaranteed to win converts".[10]

Roger Ebert gave the film two stars out of four:

You will find the movie tiresomely twee, and notice that it obviously thinks it is being funny at times when you do not have the slightest clue why that should be. You will hear dialogue that preserves the content of written humor at the cost of sounding as if the characters are holding a Douglas Adams reading ... I do not get the joke. I do not much want to get the joke, but maybe you will ... To me, it got old fairly quickly. The movie was more of a revue than a narrative, more about moments than an organizing purpose.[11]

Manohla Dargis called it "hugely likable" with a story arc structured "more or less" as "a long beginning and then an ending"; she calls Jim Henson's Creature Shop's Vogons "beautifully constructed" and noted that Sam Rockwell's performance is "sensational, ... riffing on Elvis and the current President George Bush".[5] Peter Bradshaw gave the film three stars out of five, and said: "The film is no disgrace, and honours the Guide's gentle, low-tech BBC origins. But it doesn't do justice to the open-ended inventiveness of the original. The inevitable Anglo-American accommodations of casting have muddled its identity and the performances of the new American stars can be uneasy. It somehow seems heavier-footed and slower-moving than Adams's concept; the gravity is stronger... The savour and flavour of the Adams original, its playfully ruminative feel, has been downgraded in favour of a jolly but less interesting outerspace romp."[12]

Philip French, after describing the Vogons as "a species resembling Laughton's version of Quasimodo" and writing it is "not, except in its financing, anything resembling a standard Hollywood production", and called the film "slightly old-fashioned (few things date as rapidly as science fiction and our view of the future) and somewhat commonplace through its embracing familiar special effects. The jokes have to compete with the hardware and the actors executing them often exude a feeling of desperation... It's funnier, and obviously cleverer, than Spaceballs, Mel Brooks's puerile spoof on Star Wars, but a good bit less engaging than Galaxy Quest."[13]

The movie was released on 28 April 2005 in the United Kingdom making £4,200,000 (equivalent to £6,671,598 in 2021) in its first week. It was released a day later in North America, making US$21,103,203 (equivalent to $31,620,645 in 2022) in its opening weekend, opening in first place. In the United States, the movie remained in the box office top ten for its first four weeks of release. The movie's total box office gross was $104,478,416 worldwide.[2] According to Freeman, the film would be unlikely to merit a sequel. He stated: "I found that out from the horse's mouth, [director] Garth Jennings. I had dinner with him and he said [the first one] just didn't do well enough."[14]

The movie was nominated for seven different awards and won one. It won the Golden Trailer Award under the category Most Original.[15] It was nominated for: the Artios award from Casting Society of America, United States under the category Best Featured Film Casting-Comedy in 2005; the Empire Awards from Empire Awards, UK under the categories Best British Film and Best Comedy in 2006; the Golden Trailer from Golden Trailer Awards under the category Best Voice Over; and Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie: Action and Choice Rap Artist in a Movie: Mos Def.[16]