HBO’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s classic sci-fi dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 has its first big teaser trailer. The project stars Michael B. Jordan — who’s hot off his scene-stealing performance in Marvel’s Black Panther — as a fireman whose job it is to burn books. Michael Shannon stars as his mentor and captain. The film will premiere on HBO in May.
And just because it’s awesome, here’s how Bradbury opens his 1953 novel:
It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.
