New edition of Maurice

[Who's Wee Dug]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1550418436831969280

 

[Mixa]

Interesting, thank you! I'm curious about the illustrated story of Sir Terry's journey to writing The Amazing Maurice, but I already own two copies of this book (and next year another edition in Catalan), so...

Mx

 

[RathDarkblade]

Very interesting! I wonder when it will be in bookshops -- I checked and it doesn't seem to be anywhere except in catch.com, where it is eye-bruisingly expensive (upwards of $50). =(

 

[Tonyblack]

I suspect it will be a tie-in for the upcoming movie.

 

[Molokov]

Looks like there'll be two new editions - the one mentioned above *and* a film tie in version:
https://discworldmonthly.co.uk/dwm0291.php#h_7

 

[=Tamar]

Grump. Maurice is canonically a kind of mucky grey.
The movie tie-in has to look like the movie, but the non-tie-in book need not.

 

[RathDarkblade]

Hmm. The non-tie-in book cover makes him look like an orange tabby, I think...? Maybe there are illustrations inside of him being mucky grey.

I agree the cover is not canonical, but then how many people would buy the book if the cover showed him as mucky grey?

Also, the original cover shows him as orange. See here:

 

[=Tamar]

Slight correction, he is a kind of mucky tabby [chapter 10]. The US h/b first edition cover by Chris Gall shows him as a gray-and-brown tabby, against a beige background, which also shows off the white mouse perched on his head. I suppose "mucky" could be expanded to a brindle tabby with a bit of orange. (He has yellow eyes [ch.1,pg.12], though the cover shows them green for contrast.) But he is not a bright orange.

The covers that show him primarily orange are working against a black cover. That was a choice made for commercial reasons. Book covers are almost always not canon for the contents. (Especially early Pratchett covers!) They have to show up in a bookstore at a distance, after all, while Maurice may have survived kitten-hood in Ankh-Morpork by being hard to see.

The film doesn't even make him tabby--he's just orange. I suppose it was too hard to animate a tabby design.

Mind you, I will probably get the DVD anyway.

 

[Molokov]

Producer Andrew Baker did say the "tidying up" of Maurice's colouring was due to marketability for a younger audience (and likely more to satisfy studio funders).

Here's the relevant bit:

Transcript (tidied up a bit to remove ums and ers, "you know"s and repeated phrases):

... but this is obviously Maurice, our hero, voiced by Hugh Laurie, and you can see the amazing kind of texture that we have - his fur, how it moves, how fluffy his tail is. There is obviously an issue which is in the original book, Maurice is an alleycat. His tail is big, it does say, you know that his tail is almost as big as his body. But in the original text his ears are all hanging off, his face is all scratched, you know, he looks a complete mess - very much like you would imagine Greebo. Really kind of [a] proper alleycat.

This is a family film. And so there are limits to what we can do and still get this made. So what we wanted to do was to be able to create a character that had all the personality attributes of Maurice. So, he's cocky, he's arrogant, he's scamming the rats as well as scamming humans, and he's got that real sense of a cat personality, but also he's not too beat up. He has to be a character that people don't flinch away from.

Otherwise we would just never get the project off the ground. It would just never happen. So what we tried to do was always find a balance. For Maurice, our lead character, he has to be a cat who is inspirational cat as well, and so we wanted something with real personality. And, I think, this for me, is a fabulous design and works really well for what we needed it to be.

Again, as I say, we, we made sure we got sign off at every stage with Narrativia and so it's not always what they imagined or what you might imagine as a reader of the book, but that's why I'm saying you can't do a direct translation from a book to a film. There always has to be a slight change, and it's therefore a question of what can we change, what can we keep?

So, anyway, we have our lovely Maurice here, and I have to say, he's a fabulous character, and obviously he's the hero of our movie.

 

[RathDarkblade]

I'd prefer to watch Maurice as a proper alley-cat than as the "perfect" cat that he is, but I get it - they have to satisfy the studio funders.

Sigh. Commercial realities suck. =( This guy wouldn't even get a look in. But I still say he's more handsome than the orange Maurice.

I mean, who could resist this guy?

Greebo is here to see You!