Hollywood: Game Over
By Craig Kennedy - July 2nd, 2009; 8:10 am
THR reports that Universal won a 4-studio bidding war for the rights to a feature adaptation of Atari’s 1979 video game Asteroids. You know, the game with no story or ending! Sounds perfect for Michael Bay.
Apparently they’ve already written the screenplay and one of our Universal insiders sent over a few pages. Here’s an excerpt:
Player 1: Blip… blop… blip … blop … blip … blop… pew pew pew pew pew boom… blip… blop.. blip.. blop.. blip.. pew pew pew pew pew pew pew.. blip.. blop.. blip.. whoop whoop whoop pew pew pew whoop whoop pew pew pew pew whoop whoop whoop pew pew pew pew pew boom… blip blop blip blop… boom.
Player 2: Blip… blop… blip… blop…
Source: THR
Filed under: Development
Tags: Asteroids
I will feel little pain leaving Hollywood.
Uhhhhhh…. what?
I’ve got a crazy idea: write a script about a spaceship navigating an asteroid field and don’t call it Asteroids. CALL IT SOMETHING ELSE. Then you don’t need to waste time and money outbidding another studio for a video game with no storyline, no characters, and no defining elements.
Seriously, if Mann is the Death of Hollywood then studio executives responsible for idiocy like this are the morticians, undertakers, pallbearers, and grave robbers.
I love all these death analogies to Hollywood. So appropriate.
It’s really amazing to me that it really does seem like Hollywood is out of ideas. An insane amount of remakes, and now films about Facebook and Asteroids?
Are they going to make a film about Pong next? Or possibly the thrilling story of how Twitter came to be?
When are they going to do Ms. Pacman? It’s a videogame and a love story.
Are you really abandoning us here Christian? It’ll just be that much less cool if you go.
It’s all about branding ever since the bean counters took over the studios. Creativity is just a stumbling block to making a profit. It’s a variable that can’t be controlled.
Luckily, this concept is a blank slate so they’ll actually have to use creativity to come up with a sci-fi story that somehow features a spaceship and asteroids. It’s not exactly fertile territory, but you could go in any direction with it. They won’t, but you could.
Yeah, well I want $10 million dollars for my blank slate idea. It’s called Log and kids love it. It’s just a log for now, but I’m sure it’s 90 minutes of cinematic gold in the right hands.
Let the bidding war commence.
What rolls down stairs
alone or in pairs,
and over your neighbor’s dog?
What’s great for a snack,
And fits on your back?
It’s log, log, log
It’s log, it’s log,
It’s big, it’s heavy, it’s wood.
It’s log, it’s log, it’s better than bad, it’s good!
See, drop some coin licensing that song from John K and you’re set! Kids love the log.
The bidding remains open.
What writes itself
Or sits on a shelf
Or settles like morning fog?
What is the new black
That’s better than crack?
It’s blog blog blog.
Hahaha.
OK, is no one going to laugh at the blip blop pew pew pew dialogue? I think that’s at least worth a chuckle. The monkeys don’t write that stuff just for the artistry of it you know. :)
Everytime I think Hollywood is out of ideas, it goes and shows me just how many new bad ideas it can come up with.
I’m waiting for the Ridley Scott adaptation of Special K next.
Well, those Geico cavemen ads have already been turned into a TV series, why not a film?
this is funny:
Megan Fox: “I mean, I can’t s— on this movie because it did give me a career and open all these doors for me. But I don’t want to blow smoke up people’s a–. People are well aware that this is not a movie about acting.”
“Bay says he “100 percent disagrees” with Fox.
M.B. :”Nick Cage wasn’t a big actor when I cast him, nor was Ben Affleck before I put him in ‘Armageddon.’ Shia LaBeouf wasn’t a big movie star before he did ‘Transformers’ — and then he exploded. Not to mention Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, from ‘Bad Boys’,” he points out.”
Wait….Nic Cage wasn’t a big actor before “The Rock”? Nope. He won an Oscar for “Leaving Las Vegas” but nope.
Who would have guessed Michael Baynal was a casting genius whose film craft launched so many glorious careers? But when you think about it, big explosions were journeymen nobodies in the industry before he put them front and center.
The monkeys are thrilled by your amusement JB :)
They live for that shit.
Ari, it’s a sad day (or a very amusing one) when Michael Bay comes across dumber than Megan Fox. I’m not a fan of hers based on only having seen in her in “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People”, but that’s the smartest thing I’ve heard her say.
Well, I’m leaving after I get my due from Hollywood;]
But the self-absorbed insulation of the industry…my Gawd! Even Aaron Sorkin falls prey: “I will write the story of Facebook!” Who gives a shit?
UPDATE: I just read on AICN that Dreamworks is developing a VIEW MASTER film. To be written by masters Orci and Kurtzman.
“Keep the money, Wang, I’m going home.”
Ari, you want to post a link to your source cause I have to read that for myself. Glad to know Michael Bay has exposed so many unknown talents to his audience. Here I just thought he was an @sshole.
That incident was all over the Intertubes Joel, I’ll see if I can find it.
I read that Christian, but I try to space out my Hollywood outgrage posts by at least a week.
Here’s Fox’s original Interview in EW: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20246950_20263258_20284375_4,00.html
And here’s Bay’s response in the WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204621904574249803555118212.html
Oh my god, Christian, I seriously thought you made that up. Wow. You were serious. They claim it will be “like the Amblin films of the 80′s, Goonies, etc.”
Yeah, OK, great, but does it really have to be based on the toy then? Maybe just put the toy in the movie? By that standard, E.T. would have been a project based on and leveraging the Reese’s Pieces brand.
Hollywood is so idiotic, but if this keeps those morons Orzi and Kurtzman off the Star Trek sequel, then I’m all for it.
Oh and the funny thing is that Orci and Kurtzman, the screenwriting flavors of the month behind Star Drek and Transformers are involved with the View Master project.
Say what you want about Drek, the screenplay was not that film’s strong suit, but suddenly these guys are fanboy heroes.
Ahhh…I see Joel was already noting that last little tidbit…
Now see, what I don’t get is:
When you’re writing piece of crap after piece of crap, and you know it’s going to be crap, why not just stop and take a breather and sit back on your big pile of money and travel to Italy or Antarctica or raise some children?
In the words of Jake Gittes, how much more money do you need? How much better can you eat?
Futile, I know.
What if they find the work soul fulfilling? That’s a scary thought.
Actually, Craig, that’s probably the answer. Kurtzman and Orci and whoever are probably having a lot of fun and think they’re doing really good work that their audiences really enjoy. And the box-office is, for now, backing them up. That’s kind of the worst of all possible answers to the conundrum.
Yes, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, Jeff. Box office = success. In the minds of people like Bay, Kurtzman, and Orci I’m sure that’s comforting when critics and fanboys alike are hating on your movies even when audiences are eating it up. But then there’s Star Trek, which many critics seem to love and fan boys revere, so I imagine screenwriters like Orzi and Kurtzman feel not only vindicated but empowered to do their greatest work yet.
Personally, I wish they’d stop while they’re “ahead,” but ultimately another team of hacks are waiting in the wings to take their places.
And who knows? Maybe Viewmaster: The Motion Picture will be their Stand By Me. Or maybe it will just be shit. Their track record so far doesn’t instill confidence, but maybe working on mainstream genre fare isn’t their creative strong point?