Pitch meeting for Disney's new version of A Christmas Carol

[Argus Skyhawk]

I've seen billboards for a new Disney version of Dickens' famous ghost story, starring Jim Carrey. I'm guessing there was a conversation at Disney that went something like this:




Executive 1: Okay, let's hear the movie idea you have.

Executive 2: Get this: It will be a modern screen adaptation of... *pauses dramatically* Dicken's A Christmas Carol!

Executive 3: Hey, that's great! That hasn't been done before. Well, except for the 1970 movie, Scrooge.

Executive 1: That's right! Well, there was also the 1938 movie with Reginald Owen. But hey, aside from that...


Executive 3: Oh, and the 1951 movie with Alastair Sim.

Executive 1: And A Muppet Christmas Carol. Also, there was the made-for-TV version with Henry Winkler.

Executive 3: And the made-for-TV version with Patrick Stewart.


Executive 1: And a zillion other made-for-TV versions. I swear that cable channels produced one every year during the 90's.

Executive 3: Oh, and there are a few animated versions, like The Stingiest Man in Town.

Executive 1: And Mickey’s Christmas Carol.

Executive 3: And Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol.

Executive 1: And Flintstone’s Christmas Carol.

Executive 3: Let’s not forget the spoofs, like Scrooged with Bill Murray.

Executive 1: And An American Carol.

Executive 3: And Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.

Executive 1: And special Holiday episodes of just about every sitcom.

Executive 3: Heck, Internet Movie Database lists 26 movies named A Christmas Carol.

Executive 1: Along with eight more named Scrooge.

Executive 3: So, aside from those few examples, making a screen adaptation of A Christmas Carol is a completely original ide... Oh, who are we kidding? This thing’s been adapted more often than Alice in Wonderland. Why are we even considering making another one?

Executive 2: If we make another movie, we’ll have enough material to start A Christmas Carol Channel, a cable network that shows nothing but adaptations of A Christmas Carol twenty-four seven!

*Beat*

Executive 1: I like it. Let’s get the checkbook.

[JustAFriend]

Ahem... you forget the excellent 1988 version Scrooged with Bill Murray....

Yes another re-make that didn't need to be re-maked.
Jim Carrey certainly didn't need to be animated.

Hollywood and Disney can't do anything original, that would be too scary for them....

[OmahaStar]

JustAFriend wrote:

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Ahem... you forget the excellent 1988 version Scrooged with Bill Murray....

It's right there on the line after Flintstones.

[The Wormhole]

Jeez, there sure are enough remakes these days. You know there's even going to be a remake of Moby Dick? Moby Fucking Dick!

Just wait for the product placement in these things. In A Christmas Carol the Ghost of Christmas future will probably be wearing eating somthing from Burger King, or maybe he'll be the Burger King.

Moby Dick will probably featuring Captain Ahab drinking Red Bull. Who cares about being period accurate?

[bigdaddy]

Executive 3: Let’s not forget the spoofs, like Scrooged with Bill Murray.

You forgot it, not him/her.

Not only that but the movie looks horrible! At least a lot of them are decent for what they are. This movie probably cost 100 million dollars and looks like shit.

[Nerys Myk]

The Wormhole wrote:

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Jeez, there sure are enough remakes these days. You know there's even going to be a remake of Moby Dick? Moby Fucking Dick!

Just wait for the product placement in these things. In A Christmas Carol the Ghost of Christmas future will probably be wearing eating somthing from Burger King, or maybe he'll be the Burger King.

Moby Dick will probably featuring Captain Ahab drinking Red Bull. Who cares about being period accurate?

Another remake of Moby Dick?

Film
A 1926 silent movie, The Sea Beast, starring John Barrymore as a heroic Ahab with a fiancée and an evil brother, loosely based on the novel.[1]

Remade as Moby Dick in 1930,[2] a version in which Ahab kills the whale and returns home to the woman he loves (played by Joan Bennett).

Moby Dick Rehearsed, a "play within a play" directed by Orson Welles. A performance of the play was filmed in 1955, but is now considered lost.[3]

Moby Dick, a 1956 film directed by John Huston and starring Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab, with screenplay by Ray Bradbury.

Tom and Jerry: Dicky Moe was directed by Gene Deitch and released in 1962. The peg-legged but unnamed Ahab-like captain of the Komquot is maniacally obsessed with hunting the great white whale Dicky Moe. When his crew desert, he shanghais Tom and makes him do the work of the whole crew while seamouse Jerry bedevils him. When Dicky Moe is finally sighted, the captain fires a harpoon gun but the rope attached to the harpoon is also looped around Tom's leg. The whale swims off with the captain screaming, "Come back with my whale!"

Moby Dick, featuring Jack Aranson as Captain Ahab, was filmed in 1978 and released in November 2005 on DVD. The director was Paul Stanley.[4]

A Japanese animated adaptation of Moby-Dick, called Hakugei: Legend of the Moby Dick, was produced in 1997.

Capitaine Achab a 2004 French movie directed by Philippe Ramos, with Valérie Crunchant and Frédéric Bonpart.[5]
[edit] Television
A 1964 episode of Mr. Magoo saw Ishmael Quincey Magoo hunting the great white whale.[6]

In 1967, the Hanna-Barbera series Moby Dick and Mighty Mightor featured the whale in adventures with two boys he had rescued.

A 1991 episode of the cartoon series Beetlejuice entitled "Moby Richard" had Beetlejuice and Lydia putting on 'Disasterpiece Theatre,' and deciding to do Moby Dick as their first episode. But Moby "Richard" refuses to change the classic to suit Beetlejuice's notions of what a classic should be, and quits - but not without insulting BJ first. BJ lets the character of Captain Ahab take him over, and leads the others on a dangerous mission through Sandworm Land to get revenge on the whale.[7]

Moby Dick, a 1998 television movie starring Patrick Stewart as Ahab and Gregory Peck as Father Mapple (a Golden Globe-winning performance)[8]

Moby Dick et le Secret de Mu, a 2005 Luxembourgian/French animated series produced by Benoît Petit.[9]

There are some stories that will be done over and over again. Moby Dick and A Christmas Carol are but two of them.

I doubt that product placement (far as I know they haven't done that in period pieces) will occur, but commercials from a fast food joint using the films characters will.

[Spot's Meow]

I had the pleasure of seeing the 3-D preview while in the theater for the 3-D Toy Story movies a couple of weeks ago, and this film looked AMAZING in 3-D. I'm serious, I was really shocked by how far 3-D technology has come when I saw it.

The story has been done, yes, but that's because it's a classic story. It could be done a million times and it wouldn't matter, it's still a great story. I'm actually looking forward to the movie after seeing the theater preview.

[T'Baio]

Did you know, at the world reknowned Stratford Festival, they've been putting on more remakes...of Shakespeare plays!?!

How dare they!?! I mean, they've been done as good as they're gonna' be done already!

Greedy bastards.

[Christopher]

Two words: public domain. A Christmas Carol keeps getting remade and spoofed because nobody has to pay for the rights.

For me, the fact that this film is another Christmas Carol is the least of its problems. It had Jim Carrey playing Scrooge and all three Ghosts of Christmas, which is just Carrey overload. And it's another of Robert Zemeckis's computer-animated movies, which means it's going to be deeply entrenched in the uncanny valley.

[Allyn Gibson]

Christopher wrote:

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For me, the fact that this film is another Christmas Carol is the least of its problems. It had Jim Carrey playing Scrooge and all three Ghosts of Christmas, which is just Carrey overload. And it's another of Robert Zemeckis's computer-animated movies, which means it's going to be deeply entrenched in the uncanny valley.

I really want Zemekis to stop with the CGI motion-capture. I'd have liked Beowulf more, had it been live-action.

And for the All-Christmas Carol Channel, it also needs Blackadder's Christmas Carol in the rotation.

[Mike Farley]

Christopher wrote:

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Two words: public domain. A Christmas Carol keeps getting remade and spoofed because nobody has to pay for the rights.

For me, the fact that this film is another Christmas Carol is the least of its problems. It had Jim Carrey playing Scrooge and all three Ghosts of Christmas, which is just Carrey overload. And it's another of Robert Zemeckis's computer-animated movies, which means it's going to be deeply entrenched in the uncanny valley.

Yeah, Zemeckis really needs to go back to making regular movies. What is his fascination with these Creepy-Vision animated things?

[Aragorn]

A Christmas Carol
Directed by Michael Bay

Retired mob boss Ebenezer Scrooge... Jon Voight
Dirty cop Jacob Marley... Peter Fonda
Mob lawyer Bob Cratchit... Steve Buscemi
The mob enforcer of Christmas Past... Mickey Rourke
The stripper of Christmas Present... Megan Fox
The weapons dealer of Christmas Future... Ving Rhames

[The Wormhole]

^^Strangely enough, despite how horrible that sounds, I'd probably see it.