Sci-fi novel that inspired Apple’s iconic Mac ad is hitting the big screen

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is one of my favorite dystopian sci-fi novels, and according to Hollywood magazine Deadline, it’s about to be brought to the screen courtesy of the Jason Bourne movies’ director Paul Greengrass.

For those who are unfamiliar with it, Nineteen Eighty-Four tells the story of a surveillance heavy future (well, technically the past at this point) in which an everyman named Winston Smith rebels against an all-knowing government in an age of omnipresent surveillance and perpetual war.

Not only does that make it the perfect sci-fi movie to make in the age of Edward Snowden and Google, but it’s also got a neat Apple link, since the novel inspired the original “1984” Macintosh commercial — which showed a sledgehammer-wielding freedom fighter striking back against a dystopian world in which everyone uses IBM computers.

Here’s the acclaimed advert (which turned 30 this year) if, for whatever reason, you’ve never seen it before:

Orwell’s novel was previously turned into a Hollywood movie in both 1956 and, appropriately enough, 1984.

Via: IGN

Luke Dormehl

Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.