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It turns out I missed another interesting cinema du geek project in development in my recent post about comic book movies.

Mysterious and frequent commenter Kira reports that Earthsea is in production by the Sci Fi Channel.

Having recently quoted Ursula LeGuin, who feels frustrated by false assumptions about what her characters look like, I of course wondered about the casting.

I see Ged as dark brownish-red, and all the other people in the book (except the Kargs and Serret) as brown or brown-red, to very dark or black (Vetch). In other words, in the Archipelago "people of color" are the norm, white people are an anomaly. Vice versa on the Kargish islands. That much is pretty clear in the books. How dark you want Ged to be is pretty much up to you! Why not? Readers rule, OK? But what drives me up the wall is cover illustrators — trying to get them not to make everybody white, white, white. Did you ever see the very first English edition of A Wizard of Earthsea? It was a Puffin paperback, I think. I was really excited about it — I think it was my first English publication — until I saw it. The Ged on the cover was this marshmallow-colored guy drooping like a lily in a sort of nightgown. Oh Lord! I think most white people have failed to notice that most of the people in most of my SF and fantasy are not white people. So. What else is new?

The news on the cast is a mixed bag. Danny Glover plays Ogion, which is a terrific choice. Isabella Rosselini plays Thar, which is cool just because Isabella Rosselini is cool. Kristin Kreuck, the extremely not-redheaded Lana Lang of Smallville, plays Tenar. Um, okay, she's at least a little bit Berkeley beige. But Shawn Ashmore is Ged, and though I liked him as Iceman in X-Men, he's about the whitest guy I can think of.