Poseidon Adventure

I was midway through replying to in Ants fluid thread and realised I was about to spam / rant and go totally off topic - so I started this one!

They are remaking the Poseidon Adventure?!?!? WTF! Hollywood has definately run out of ideas! What's the story here? It seems like there have been no original ideas since... well, since the Matrix.

As far as I can tell this is all the result of various mergers of media companies in recent years - the offshoot of these mergers is that they recieve the rights to all the back catalogue films that have sat around gathering dust. Since the newly merged outfits retain these rights remakes cost a heck of a lot less than developing new ideas, writing scripts from scratch etc.

I think this one will come from Warner Bros, now a subsiduary of AOL Times Warner, (whos loses have broken corporate records running into 100's billions of dollars) So it's no wonder they are trying to cash in on risk free projects (Incidentaly they'll be using the lots made for Perfect Storm to save more cash) And churning out crap that was, well, crap even back then! (lets face it, the Poseidon Adventure is not a good film, it is a classic sure - but only because it has 'kitsch' value, we remember it from childhood)

I can just imagine the meeting:-

[the Ideas Man] "Hey boss we have this great idea for a film..."
[the Money Man] "Yeah?"
[IM] "Yeah... it's about a ship you see... and um... well, it sinks"
[MM]"It just sinks?" *Starts thinking about the billion dollar turnover from the Titanic*
[IM]"Yeah but get this *Dramatic pause* it takes a lot longer for it to sink than, say... the Titanic
[MM]"Shoot I'm listening!" *calculates the sinking time to dollar ratio equation*
[IM]"And even better than that is that we know the public love the idea before we even begin shooting because the networks have aired the original film thousands of times since it was first made"
[MM]"Dang! That's great! Here's $150 million"

Not only this, but the Poseidon Adventure is also due to be made into a mini series!! (from another company admittedly) Where they'll be dragging out dried up 80's actors (like Steve Guttenburg!) plonking them on the ship and making then the victims of a terrorist attack... somebody please shoot me now!

Meh! I for one will be boycotting this film on principle - no matter how nice the eyecandy is (and lets face it, this film will just be eyecandy)

Anyways... thanks for listening to my rant, it doesn't happen too often (I'll get off my soapbox now and have my second morning coffee, it may calm me down)

haha yeah, i know, not sure if it was even ever a great film in the first place but the company i work for will be doing the eye candy along with ilm so... well errr I THINK IT WILL BE GREAT,

Hehe - Well, I have slowly calmed myself with endless amounts of coffee today (I reached caffiene Nirvana at about 3pm... my whole body is shaking now but my mind is a focussed beam of pure energy) This could be a problem as I have to get up at 5am tomorrow morning

Nice one Ant - I'm sure it will be a great project to work on, but I hope you know what I was getting at. I'm sure you'd agree that it would be nice to see some original ideas come your way to work on.

Anyways, I have a very busy day ahead tomorrow so I may not be around but I'll consider a topic for my next rant and see if I can 'put my foot in it' with anyone else on the forums! Yay!

u didn't put your foot in it mate, dont worry i agree, qulaity fx have never made a story better, i wont be working on it anyway, i'm commercials, (dont like the idea of spending 1 year on one project, i tend to get through projects in a few days)

i would love to see the board meeting that decided that STEALTH for example would be great film, (although i am strangly wanting to see that??!??! ) i cant understand what goes on, espiecially when there are actually great films, even great action films being made today. theres just sooo many awful ones.

btw anyone seen the chicken little trailer..... eeeek looks like a student short, sorry disney has lost the plot (literally!)

The matrix is original? I think not!!! Good, yes, original, no.

You don't agree Cam? Hmm, maybe it wasn't a great example - but that was about the first one that popped into my head (see what Hollywood is doing to us?!) I guess there are certain things in the film, themes etc that are borrowed from other sources, but I still thought as a whole it was pretty fresh.

Anyhoo, another example of an original idea / concept, and one of my personal favourites in recent years (though not recent enough), Memento.

So help me out here guys. If you know of any recent films that really are a break from the norm (not remakes - rehashes - or bad book / comic to film crossovers) list them here