In quite possibly the stupidest film development news I've heard in a very long while, Ed Brubaker provides an update on the film version of his Wildstorm series Sleeper: On top of that, aren't they normally in favour of ripping off popular things?
And in other news, people who have offices but do no work in them bullshit to justify their salaries.
The movie I'm attached to takes place in a post-apocalyptic future. But because Nine is coming out and Terminator Salvation already came out, we have to change it. But we can't set it in the present either because most movies coming out are set in the present. But there are also a lot of movies set in the past, so we can't use that either. We're still working on it. We're also working on changing The Time Traveler's Wife to just The Traveler's Wife (strictly through cutting and re-editing, no pickup shots will be needed) because Star Trek has time travel in it.
I'm still waiting for the "news" part of this thread. Seriously, Hollywood execs being morons is nothing new. The only news here is that Tom Cruise was going to star in a movie with a blackhole in a suitcase... which makes no sense to me but then this is Hollywood.
Hollywood execs are indeed morons...I think Superman needs to fight a giant spider and we should have a sasquatch like being so we can market that as a toy to kids who'll think it'll be the best thing since sliced bread! Sometimes I do wonder what kind of decision making skills these people have...another example, that's add subtitles to titles for no particular reason because we think audiences are too stupid to go to a movie that is titled X2 or X3.
Lucasfilm had them kill off Anakin Solo in the EU because they thought people would confuse him with Anakin Skywalker.
No, actually he didn't. Lucas had them switch Anakin and Jacen's roles but he didn't tell them to kill him.
This happens when people get to decide things of which they have little knowledge of. Movie CEOs are usually not picked from the creative side of Hollywood filmmaking but from the business side of things which in a way makes sense in a twisted kind of way. Those CEOs usually put more faith in demographic research, test groups and his marketing folks than in people from his creative division (scriptwriters, directors, actors etc) because they deal in measurable numbers, i.e. how many people from a certain demographic will watch a movie that has certain elements in it and how much will this cost. Then you get a mathematical number which determines if the movie will make a profit. Problem is that such a creative business is only to a degree measurable.. the last part is still very unpredictable which is why some movies get spent over 100 million dollars on and bomb badly and why some movies that cost 10-30 million become huge hits earning many times their cost. There is no formula to this thing so people take what they have and apply it because they can't judge themselves and have to use what they know.. which is also the main reason why we have a creative stagnation in filmmaking. Sequels are far more predictable especially if the original movie was a big success so we get the sequel flood. The same happens with every genre that's currently popular.. Science Fiction Movies, Western, Superhero etc. If one movie in this genere becomes a huge hit studios will scramble like mad to join in and cash in.