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Thu Dec 10
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@BadUncle: I know as if global domination couldn't be an aspect of the agenda. Maybe humans killed their father and they b ecame aliens to a avenge him, so the agenda is..... Revenge.......
I'm a sci-fi/fantasy book junkie. I've read some incredible novels. Novels which would make for fantastic screenplays---MULTIPLE great screenplays. Yet, only PKD appears to be screen worthy.
I don't get it. A vast arsenal of talent and ideas. Why is it not being tapped? Why are we stuck with indies (the only real good movies) and crap like this?
@FrankenPC: Legal reasons, mostly. Securing the film rights for a novel can be a real hassle, especially if the author is alive and doesn't want his or her work adapted. If the author is dead and their work isn't in the public domain yet, then the author's heirs can play hardball with the rights. Tolkien's family, for instance, put all kinds of restrictions on what New Line was and wasn't allowed to do with Lord of the Rings. Another factor is cost. Writers are only limited by their imaginations. It's far easier to describe a vast galactic empire than it is to design and build it for a movie.
@Bill-Lee: Sure...I've heard that the costs for a script alone could run in the millions.
But, there are talented writers out there trying to sell their own adaptations. And they are getting nowhere. I really think this is a lack of creativity on the Hollyweird scene.
@FrankenPC: Buying book rights costs money. Contrary to what Bill-Lee said, most authors are so insanely grateful for the movie rights cash (which can bring in more money than they'd see from ten years of book sales, even if the book is a bestseller) that they don't give a toss what gets done to the scripts. Tolkien sold the movie rights to LotR in 1969 for enough money to secure his kids' futures and pay his tax bill, and the Tolkien Estate had zero say in what New Line did to the movies as a result.
What is weird is that there are books where the movie rights were sold years ago which still haven't been adapted. Richard Morgan's ALTERED CARBON would make a badass movie (body-swapping soldier of fortune investigates murder with aid of sentient hotel equipped with miniguns) and Joel Silver spent a million dollars on the rights seven years ago, and the thing still hasn't moved out of development hell. Same with Scott Lynch's LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA, where the film rights were sold before the book came out and zilch has happened with it.
You don't even need a high-concept novel. There are plenty of good, action-based books out there if you want something as widescreen entertaining as say 2012 without the resulting mental retardation. Harry Turtledove's WORLDWAR book series is bonkers as hell (lizard-like aliens invade Earth in 1942) but would be great fun as a popcorn flick.
LittleDragon promoted this comment
Edited by The Ultimate Tea Cup at 12/09/09 12:14 AM
The Ultimate Tea Cup was starred
The Ultimate Tea Cup was unstarred
@LittleDragon: I should have added a smiley or something - I have in fact played the game and even remember when the first electronic version came out.
@Dr Emilio Lizardo: It's not a good thing because it's an awesome thing! Myabe not that awesome but still it should be decent eye candy, movies are just there to have fun and as along as the acting is pretty good I can forgo some science for the explosions.
@Antonio: You may want to be careful about using profitability as a surrogate endpoint for quality. Cough *Twilight* Cough. Or any of the "_____________ Movie" franchise.
PT Barnum was right, it doesn't mean I have to like it.
@phoghat: I would watch a sequel to ID4 but I really don't know where it would go because I thought the end wrapped things up nice and neat. If Emmerich gets his sequel wish I would like to see the alien tech in the first be used to take us to the stars and then another hostile enemy.
@Dr Emilio Lizardo: I do believe Will Ferrell/James Lipton called 10,000BC "the most stunningly compelling, historically accurate piece of breathtaking-cinematic genius since Ernest Goes to Camp"!
1. Take a board game that has a built in marketing.
2. Integrate one minor aspect of the game into the script so you can say it's based on said game.
3. Add in an antagonist that has absolutely nothing to do with the board game.
4. Get it produced by Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckeimer.
5. Profit!
I'm going to make a movie based on Candyland. It will take place in an FAO Scharwz type store, but filled with all kinds of delicious candy. But... and get this, it all takes place during a zombie outbreak. The customers must defend themselves from a zombie horde, as they make their way through the building to safety. It is no way a rip off of Dawn of the Dead. Now, someone get me Michael Bay's number!
@EdificeComplex: I want to see a horror movie based on Candyland. Take a bunch of high powered executives on a team-building exercise and push them until they start killing each other. With lots of candy, of course, but no Candy Killer - this is about greed and cutthroat competition. I suppose zombies could easily play a key role.
@MonkeyT: Have it be that due to the zombie outbreak, the executives are all stranded at the location of the team building exercise. Soon, the alpha male theory comes into play and they all vie for dominance. One scene will be an executive getting stabbed through the eye with a PEZ dispenser.
@ManchuCandidate: How about Megan Fox as a hot zombie. Stumbling around half naked. Hell, even fully naked. Just because it's called Candyland doesn't mean it has to be G rated.
@EdificeComplex: They should make a movie based on Operation and it could be like Saw or something. They could Chutes and Ladders and make it more like Shoots and Lasers...
@MonkeyT: No, that should be the plot for "Sorry!", the movie. Like an entire corporate wilderness retreat filled with that guy from American Psycho. Call my agent!
@EdificeComplex: Oooo, You forgot the moral, though. I think they should use the candy to destroy the zombies' teeth and render them harmless. They they can all go dancing in the lollipop forest with the gumdrop man (who happens to be an ex-green beret)!
@ManchuCandidate: Agreed, and this is just another checkmark in my argument that Hollywood can't come up with a original idea to save it's life. They now just take books,comics,games and then regurgitate them into something for the mindless drivel to look at.
@Im_your_Huckleberry: And, yet, you have incredibly cool ideas being produced by people outside of Hollywood (case in point, the *awesome* "How to Succeed in Evil" audio novel), so it's not a matter of all good ideas having been used up already. It's really the incompetence of the Hollywood powers to recognize and support new talent.
@Roklimber: "It's really the incompetence of the Hollywood powers to recognize and support new talent."
That says it all right there. Hollywood is now all about what can we put out that will make us the most $$$, it's not really important if we actually have a good script, plot, director, actors and even if it makes no sense at all just put alot of "BOOM" or "ZOMBIES" or "VAMPIRES" in it and Cha-ching it's all good baby. Meh!
@shikome001: That used to sound good and i really loved the fun-bad & MST3K options you could use to get thru some of those stupid movies, but even now that isn't helping anymore. I just really want a GOOD original script and GOOD original story told well. Is that asking too much of Hollywood?
On one hand, I'm not really upset. Hollywood is, after all, a business and we shouldn't expect anything more from any business than that it does whatever makes the most money for it, at the end of the day.
But it does sadden me greatly that talent is being ignored and shit is being produced en mass, all for the sake of money. Whatever happened to movie-making as art?
Long gone are the days when Hollywood was open to people to create a Star Wars or Indiana Jones, or a Terminator, or The Abyss, or The Wrath of Khan, or The Voyage Home, or ET, or Close Encounters, just to mention a few.
Consider District 9, for instance. If it wasn't for Peter Jackson's weight after the success of The Lord of The Rings, his support of D9's director would have meant absolutely nothing and the movie wouldn't have been produced.
But you know what? I blame the public more than the money-crazy powers behind Hollywood. If the public were to be more selective and stopped flocking to theaters to see shit, Hollywood would stop making shit.
@Roklimber: Agreed and Spot on! Some of my previous posts in other treads echo that statement about it's also the public fault. If they didn't pay for all this SHIT, Hollywood would be forced to come up with or look for something new.
Okay, somebody out there has to make this movie before they do, by cleverly editing together scenes from The Hunt for Red October and Independence Day.
Nervous Ensign: "Sir, the alien ships are strategically dropping depth missiles above us in a grid-like pattern, trying to locate our position! If we move, we're dead, but if we stay here, they're sure to sink us eventually. We need to retaliate by sinking their mothership, but we don't know where it is!"
@Jeremy Tapsell: You're thinking Down Periscope which came out around the same time as the movie version of McHale's Navy (only notable because Bruce Campbell was in it).
I remember at the time not being able to distinguish them and at the moment I still can't... #battleship
Wouldn't a battleship movie be just a WWII period piece that focuses on the sea battles? That could still be good. Kamikazi, U boats, nautical lore. If you have to sci-fi it up, you could pull a Pirates of the Caribbean, and add a nautical myth subplot that plays out within the context of the story. Sort of like how Indiana Jones has the Nazis looking for magical artifacts. This time, the Japanese are trying to raise a giant sea monster to help them sway the tide at the battle of Midway. #battleship
@Stndsh0: In this instance they would be colored white or red and smash into the ship but not destroy it, so it could look like it does in the game. #battleship
12/03/09
If not, he must've gotten into the movie industry because he couldn't hold down a job at McDonald's.
-Kle.
12/02/09
"Their is something that wants something and they will do stuff to get that thing"
12/02/09
They've got a very specific agenda. That agenda is not global domination. It's an agenda...
Really, though, do they have an agenda?
12/02/09
12/02/09
I don't get it. A vast arsenal of talent and ideas. Why is it not being tapped? Why are we stuck with indies (the only real good movies) and crap like this?
12/02/09
12/02/09
But, there are talented writers out there trying to sell their own adaptations. And they are getting nowhere. I really think this is a lack of creativity on the Hollyweird scene.
12/02/09
What is weird is that there are books where the movie rights were sold years ago which still haven't been adapted. Richard Morgan's ALTERED CARBON would make a badass movie (body-swapping soldier of fortune investigates murder with aid of sentient hotel equipped with miniguns) and Joel Silver spent a million dollars on the rights seven years ago, and the thing still hasn't moved out of development hell. Same with Scott Lynch's LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA, where the film rights were sold before the book came out and zilch has happened with it.
You don't even need a high-concept novel. There are plenty of good, action-based books out there if you want something as widescreen entertaining as say 2012 without the resulting mental retardation. Harry Turtledove's WORLDWAR book series is bonkers as hell (lizard-like aliens invade Earth in 1942) but would be great fun as a popcorn flick.
12/02/09
So Jeff Goldblum is going to be on the Aliens' side this time? Maybe we should all up date our virus protection.
12/09/09
12/09/09
12/09/09
This one:
[www.gamesmuseum.uwaterloo.ca]
12/09/09
I have actually met people who have not idea about board games. Met a girl once who couldn't play solitaire with really cards.
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
PT Barnum was right, it doesn't mean I have to like it.
12/02/09
I waited for a sequel to Independence Day with no success. I think I'm going to get my wish.
12/02/09
12/02/09
I rest my case.
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
1. Take a board game that has a built in marketing.
2. Integrate one minor aspect of the game into the script so you can say it's based on said game.
3. Add in an antagonist that has absolutely nothing to do with the board game.
4. Get it produced by Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckeimer.
5. Profit!
I'm going to make a movie based on Candyland. It will take place in an FAO Scharwz type store, but filled with all kinds of delicious candy. But... and get this, it all takes place during a zombie outbreak. The customers must defend themselves from a zombie horde, as they make their way through the building to safety. It is no way a rip off of Dawn of the Dead. Now, someone get me Michael Bay's number!
12/02/09
Needs more explosions, and Megan Fox in a superfluous role.
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
"You destroyed my alien battleship!!!"
"Asshole."
Stupidest fucking movie ever.
12/02/09
12/02/09
12/02/09
What if its so over the top bat-shit-insane that it actually makes sense?
Imagine "Mars Attacks" (Tim Burton) but made "seriously".
It might be so utterly stupid it becomes fun... an Epic Hollywood Big budget B movie!
It probably wont, but here's hoping :P
12/02/09
If it works, I weep for the overall stupidity of humanity and fervently plot a (unlikely) means of escaping it.
If it does work then I'll be working on a script based on the game: Sorry!
12/02/09
That says it all right there. Hollywood is now all about what can we put out that will make us the most $$$, it's not really important if we actually have a good script, plot, director, actors and even if it makes no sense at all just put alot of "BOOM" or "ZOMBIES" or "VAMPIRES" in it and Cha-ching it's all good baby. Meh!
12/02/09
12/02/09
Yes.
12/02/09
"f it works, I weep for the overall stupidity of humanity and fervently plot a (unlikely) means of escaping it."
I already do both, though I haven't yet succeeded in escaping it.
12/02/09
On one hand, I'm not really upset. Hollywood is, after all, a business and we shouldn't expect anything more from any business than that it does whatever makes the most money for it, at the end of the day.
But it does sadden me greatly that talent is being ignored and shit is being produced en mass, all for the sake of money. Whatever happened to movie-making as art?
12/02/09
12/02/09
"Is that asking too much of Hollywood?"
In this day and age, yes.
Long gone are the days when Hollywood was open to people to create a Star Wars or Indiana Jones, or a Terminator, or The Abyss, or The Wrath of Khan, or The Voyage Home, or ET, or Close Encounters, just to mention a few.
Consider District 9, for instance. If it wasn't for Peter Jackson's weight after the success of The Lord of The Rings, his support of D9's director would have meant absolutely nothing and the movie wouldn't have been produced.
But you know what? I blame the public more than the money-crazy powers behind Hollywood. If the public were to be more selective and stopped flocking to theaters to see shit, Hollywood would stop making shit.
12/02/09
11/09/09
It is a Battleship movie right ? as in water based Battleships #battleship
11/09/09
Nervous Ensign: "Sir, the alien ships are strategically dropping depth missiles above us in a grid-like pattern, trying to locate our position! If we move, we're dead, but if we stay here, they're sure to sink us eventually. We need to retaliate by sinking their mothership, but we don't know where it is!"
Cpt. Connery: "Give me one ping only" #battleship
11/09/09
11/09/09
I remember at the time not being able to distinguish them and at the moment I still can't... #battleship
11/09/09
11/09/09
11/09/09
11/09/09
11/09/09
11/09/09
11/09/09
11/09/09