In keeping with the fundament of self-interest that underscores its source material, the producers of the Atlas Shrugged movies have confirmed that a third film will be made—a film that will, again, primarily interest themselves. Both previous installments in Ayn Rand’s vision of a world righted by corporate shit-fits have earned far less than they cost, taking in a combined $8 million at the box office for the approximately $30 million that was spent on them. Such numbers would lead most filmmakers to see this as an edict from the free market to just yield their work to some other’s control already, were they not still subscribed to Rand’s definition of objective thinking as “harboring hate-filled petulance for things that get in your way.”


Also, this is about more than just money, even though this whole thing is about money: “We are ultimately confident that we're going to have absolutely no direct impact on the looters already entrenched in Washington,” producer Harmon Kaslow snipes bitterly of his films’ failure so far to sway America’s criminal politicians from stealing from the railroad tycoons that no longer exist, or from forcing America’s titans of industry to close the factories they’ve long since closed and shipped to China of their own volition. “We are, however, equally as confident that if we let Atlas speak for itself, we can have an impact on the voters that put them there,” he concludes.

Indeed, like Part I and Part II—which debuted on April 15 (Tax Day) of 2011 and just before the presidential election of 2012, respectively—Part III will be released right before the midterms, where it will remind the few voters who see it of the importance of the independent spirit, by force-feeding them an interminable, clunky monologue of ideas to parrot. No director or stars are currently signed on, but—like the first two films—soon enough the roles of those independent spirits will be plugged with interchangeable cogs in the machine.