By Ryan Fleming.
Hollywood is a very superstitious industry. Perhaps not overly so compared to others but given its sheer scale of self-promotion, even these superstitions are given the limelight. In some cases, it is an actual film that is the subject of superstition. Atuk is one such film. Despite remaining unfilmed, it is supposedly responsible for the deaths of many associated with its development.
Atuk is an adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s 1963 satirical Canadian novel The Incomparable Atuk. The first attempts to adapt the film were made in the 1970s, but it was in the 1980s that saw some notable names attached to various attempts and also saw the curse theory began to form. More attempts would follow in the 1990s, with similar results, and as of 2025 the film has been in development hell for more than half a century.
Let us just assume for the time being that there is no curse: what were the actual plans for a film adaptation of The Incomparable Atuk?
Mordecai Richler was already a prominent Canadian novelist by the time The Incomparable Atuk was published. His fifth novel concerned an Inuit hunter who moves to Toronto and becomes a major celebrity. Said celebrity status comes through the Canadian elite seeing him first as a noble savage and later as symbolic of Canadian nationalism. The title character is neither a passenger to events nor aloof from them, finding himself increasingly corrupted by modern metropolitan capitalist Canadian culture.
This cultural satire was a frequent theme in Richler’s works and often drawn from his own experiences, whether it be in the working-class Jewish neighbourhoods in Montreal similar to where he grew up or amongst a deluge of North American writers living in London during the 1950s. The novel is very steeped in contemporary Toronto, with many characters being based on prominent cultural and political figures. The Incomparable Atuk received good reviews in both Canada and the US, where it was published under the title Stick Your Neck Out for reasons. It would be a fellow Canadian that would first see the film potential in Richler’s novel.
Norman Jewison had found success in the United States in the late 1960s with films like the comedy The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), the mystery drama In the Heat of the Night (1967), and the heist film The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). He had relocated to the UK, becoming disenchanted with the US, by the time he shot the musical Fiddler on the Roof (1971). That would be the same year he purchased the film rights to The Incomparable Atuk, intending to film it in Canada after his next project, Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), another musical.
For whatever reason, this did not transpire, and it is worth noting that at this early stage The Incomparable Atuk was just one of a myriad of novels whose film rights were purchased in the 1970s and just sat in limbo. If there was a curse, it was a widespread and fairly benign one. Jewison’s actual next film would be the similarly satirical, but far less comedic, science fiction sports film Rollerball (1975). There would not even be an Atuk script produced until he commissioned National Lampoon’s Tod Carroll to write it in 1977.
It is with the script that we have one of the major departures from the novel. Instead of being a Canadian Inuit who moves to Toronto, the title character would instead be an Alaskan native who moves to New York City. Since Jewison had thought earlier about filming in Canada we do not know if Americanising the novel had always been the intention, but it is with the script that this definitely becomes the case. Evidently, it was feared that Canadian culture would prove too alien and exotic to most US audiences. Another aspect of Atuk that seems to originate with the script is that the character is to be mixed race, the son of a white missionary and an Inuit woman. This may have been intentional in the expected casting, but there was still no lead attached, and, despite a completed script, the project went into hibernation once again.
No further effort was made to adapt The Incomparable Atuk to film for the rest of the 1970s, with Jewison instead making the dramas F.I.S.T. (1978) and …And Justice for All (1979). Still no real signs of a curse, this is just the usual Hollywood chicanery that comes with adapting a work then as now. The script, like many, would be handed around in Hollywood until 1982, when it reached the hands of a star who saw its potential.
By the time Atuk had its first actor attached, it had already been in development for more than a decade. Already mired in development hell, there is still no sign of it being especially cursed.
The star that took an interest in Carroll’s script in early 1982 was John Belushi. He and Carroll had been friendly, possibly via their mutual connection to National Lampoon, with National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) being Belushi’s breakout film role after he left Saturday Night Live. Belushi was reportedly excited by the role, but he was found dead on March 5th, 1982, in a hotel. Consider how quickly things turned around, if Belushi read the script in early 1982 and was interested there would only have been weeks between his reading and his death.
The script quickly went back into hibernation, as did another script Belushi was considering at the time of his death. After a few more years in hibernation, the rights were released in 1986 and picked up by United Artists. By 1988 they had secured a lead and were all ready to begin production of the Carroll script. They managed a maximum of 8 days of filming before production halted. Another tragedy, another part of the curse? Eventually, but not yet. Unless, of course, one considers production disputes a kind of curse.
The lead for the 1988 United Artists adaptation was to be Sam Kinison. Kinison was a Pentecostal preacher turned stand-up comedian and actor. His brash approach to comedy, likely transferable skills from his days of fire and brimstone, has been compared to that of Belushi. Also akin to Belushi, Kinison had substance abuse issues. These would not be directly responsible for the halted production, however. Instead, when they began filming Kinison began to ask or demand (depending on who’s telling the story) for script rewrites and greater creative control. With accumulating costs, relations between Kinison & his manager and United Artists broke down. The latter eventually filed a lawsuit against the former, alleging that Kinison intended to give an intentionally bad performance. Whilst this was dragging out, Atuk went on ice once again, and was still back in limbo when Kinison was killed in a car crash in 1992.
If this was a curse it was leaving it pretty late, considering it could have been filmed four years earlier if the star and studio had come to terms. Had they done so, Atuk would have been filmed and released in 1988 and there would have been no curse theory.
The 1988 attempt remains the closest that Atuk had ever came to being filmed, but it was not the last major attempt. In 1994, screenwriter Michael O’Donoghue (another alumnus of both National Lampoon and Saturday Night Live) sought to film the script with Canadian star John Candy in the lead. Both men would be dead before 1994 was out. Saturday Night Live alumni loom large over a 1997 attempt to film the novel. Chris Farley, who considered Belushi his idol, was to have played the lead but was found dead under similar circumstances to Belushi and at the same stage in December 1997. Farley had allegedly shared the script with Phil Hartman, who considered performing in the film himself. Hartman was murdered by his wife in 1998.
At this point, the curse theory was in full swing by 1999, when the Los Angeles Times interviewed Tod Carroll about it. Carroll dismissed it as coincidence, but the legend persists to this day. However, the evidence of the curse is selectively chosen and ignores anyone connected to the script who remains at large.
Since 1997, stars like Will Ferrell, Jack Black, John Goodman, and Josh Mostel have been connected with the role. All are still with us at the time of writing. Though Jonathan Winters, another actor connected with the role, also died, it was decades later in 2013 at the age of 87.
The curse rumours did resurface at the time of the death of Winters’ protégé, Robin Williams, in 2014. It shows how these superstitions persist, and Atuk remains unfilmed to this day.
All that had to happen for there to be no curse theory, based entirely on coincidence and ignoring all other factors (why do these husky comedians with a history of substance abuse problems keep dying young? Must be supernatural forces), is for the film to actually be made.
They had begun filming in 1988, but it was only disputes between Kinison and the studio that halted filming. What if they had been able to come to terms? Or, what if another lead had been chosen in 1988? John Candy was already a known quantity in 1988, was more of a film star than Kinison, and would likely not have the same issues with the script after filming began. Atuk would have been filmed and released in 1988, the curse would have been broken! Kinison, Candy, O’Donoghue, Farley, and Hartman would all go on to have many, many more years ahead of them! Or, probably, not, though some of the deaths alleging caused by the curse are easily avoidable (Kinison’s death in a car crash, for instance), others (like Candy’s or Farley’s) owe much more to predisposition arising from family history or lifestyle.
How would Atuk have fared if filmed in 1988 with John Candy in the lead? Per screenwriter Tod Carroll, “it may have been a nice movie.” This even-handedness at his own work, even caveated by it needing “the right actor and right tone” perhaps indicates that the legendary status of Atuk is more down to the supposed curse surrounding it rather than any world-shattering quality in the script. Candy might certainly have been the right actor, but it’s difficult to imagine the satire being especially biting from a late 1980s Hollywood production intended to satirise modern lifestyles in New York City. The eventual film being defanged of anything approaching the satire from Richler’s original novel is perhaps inevitable from any adaptation, maybe even more so with the shift of location from Canada to the US. It would certainly have found an audience and might even be fondly remembered alongside Candy’s other works, but ironically without the infamy of the curse Atuk would perhaps be doomed to anonymity. There is also the aspect of Candy playing an Inuit which would be looked at very differently in the decades to come.
At this point, it should be acknowledged that this isn’t the only curse script or cursed role associated with Belushi. Or Candy. Or Farley. Or Kinison. An adaptation of A Confederacy of Dunces has similarly been in development hell since for decades and had all actors connected to the lead role of Ignatius J. Reilly. They were all linked too at times with the lead role in a biopic of silent film comedy actor Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle.
Were all these curses true, between them Atuk, Ignatius, and Roscoe would have body counts to rival Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Kruger. That there are three alleged curses all involving the same people really should dispel any belief, if any belief was still held, in all of them. In true Hollywood fashion of riding the same idea until it is ground into dust, the industry even remade the same curse three times with most of the same players. The sad fact is that the substance abuse that pervaded much of film and comedy for decades shortened the lives of these people, one way or another.
That ability for self-promotion even extended to the existence of the curse itself, with its earliest mention coming on a 1998 TV special, Hollywood Ghost Stories, hosted by William Shatner, and regaled by Doug Draizin, one of the producers attached to the Kinison film. If you can’t get a script made despite trying again and again, might as well add a bit of notoriety to it and hopefully create interest for either it or yourself.
A very superstitious industry, one whose curses are easily explained by more mundane, more tragic, circumstances. So tragic, in fact, that perhaps the idea of a curse gives more comfort than accepting that it’s the nature of the beast. Better to have three separate curses involving the same people than think about a wider issue.
At this point, The Incomparable Atuk will likely never be filmed. Much like A Confederacy of Dunces, perhaps now the real interesting story to be told is the story of the attempts to make it rather than the work itself.
Ryan Fleming is the author of SLP's Reid in Braid and various short stories for the anthologies, as well as editing The Scottish Anthology.