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Screenwriter Avary first encountered Beowulf in a high school English class — and not coincidentally, he says, ''I got a C that year.'' Around the time of Pulp Fiction, he partnered with Gaiman to begin hammering out a screenplay of Beowulf, which he initially planned to direct himself with a modest $20 million budget. In late 2004, following the success of Polar Express, Zemeckis jumped on board the project. A noted control freak who, during the making of Contact, digitally tweaked Jodie Foster's eyebrow in one scene, Zemeckis saw unlimited possibilities for his new box of motion-capture tools. (The director is not speaking to the press for Beowulf.) ''Bob said, 'There's nothing you can write that I can't film,''' says Gaiman. ''Suddenly, I'm writing a battle where Beowulf is fighting a dragon under the sea — all the kind of cool stuff we couldn't have done before.''
What's more, it could all be done on a soundstage in Culver City. No need to scout picturesque Norwegian villages or hire extras for battle scenes — the whole thing could be digitally fabricated. Zemeckis' technology could transform Crispin Glover into a raging monster and paunchy British actor Ray Winstone (Sexy Beast), who plays Beowulf, into a hunky hero. For the actors, who also include Anthony Hopkins as King Hrothgar, this meant acting in wetsuits while plastered from head to toe with digital sensors. Winstone insists the technology wasn't cumbersome: ''After the first day you get used to it, and it kind of makes you more aware of your muscles. It was a way of working I would love to try again.''
Seeking to stir up fanboy enthusiasm, Paramount screened that exclusive Beowulf footage at Comic-Con, but even the niche audience's allegiance isn't a sure thing. To hedge its bet, Beowulf will have the biggest 3-D rollout of any movie in history, bowing on just under 1,000 digital 3-D screens and in 90 IMAX theaters. The hope is that the high-tech format will pay off the way it has for films like Polar Express, Chicken Little, and Meet the Robinsons, all of which performed strongly in 3-D.
With A-list directors like James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, and Peter Jackson developing 3-D projects of their own, all of Hollywood will be watching Beowulf as a test case. ''This is the next frontier,'' says DreamWorks Animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg, a lead evangelist of 3-D. ''In the future, I think 50 to 70 percent of the moviegoing experience will be in 3-D.'' For his part, Avary thinks this cinematic marriage of advanced technology and ancient poetry makes sense. ''Beowulf has been transformed over the years, depending on who's telling it,'' he says. ''We don't have fire pits to tell our stories around. We're doing it in the theaters.'' Now he just hopes that millions of other people will leave those theaters, as he did, in a kind of daze, wondering if it's safe to drive home.
See more from the EW 2007 Holiday Movie Preview:
Inside the making of Sweeney Todd
Johnny Depp: EW's extended Q&A with the Sweeney Todd star
Mr. and Mrs. Noah Baumbach invite you to their Wedding
First Listen: The title song from Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
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