I personally have an idea for at least 40-50 major motion pictures. You?
Last year I thought, if there’s going to be any way to watch the movies I want to watch, I’ll have to make it myself. The one trope I love that you rarely ever see is the “crouching tiger, hidden badass” type hero, a’la 30 days later, Brotherhood of the Wolf, and (from what I can hear about it but I can’t get on video) You’re Next.
So, I have one movie completely planned out in my head based on this idea. Ideally, it would also star Whoopie Goldberg and Morgan Freeman.
Another idea I have is a true utopia story/film, but I haven’t fleshed it out as much. I did some research on utopias and dystopias in college, and there really aren’t that many examples of utopias.
I have tons of ideas, some of them are actually good and if they were made I think would be popular. They include adventure films, kids movies, comedies, and period films; and at least one is all four.
Ideas don’t mean much, though. Everybody has at least one or two decent ideas rolling around in their head. What matters is having the wherewithal to make them (funding, crew, time, distribution) let alone the talent to achieve it, and the luck for everything to fall in their favour which would allow them to make a second one.
Define ‘tons’. Dozens? Hundreds? 20?
“Everyone has one or two ideas in their heads”: actually, most people never have an idea for a movie in their life, believe me I’ve polled the public at large.
Perhaps you could share some of your ‘tons’ of ideas? I’d like to critique how good they really are.
Some of them I’ve abandoned, and some are friends ideas that I’ve helped co-create, but if I dusted them all off it’d probably be around twenty or so.
What I meant was that, even if they didn’t know it, they have a story in their own lives, or a broad concept, that would work as a movie. Like a family member who got into a wacky incident, or a “movie meets other movie” idea that fleetingly flitted through their head once (“Hey, dude, you know what would be cool? Bad News Bears meets Underworld!”).
I’ll send you a PM.
Heh if you’ve never made any of the movies in your head, how are you qualified to evaluate other people’s ideas? 
I’m not professionally ‘qualified’ to judge other people’s ideas, but I could compare them to my own ideas and judge them thusly based on concept, originality, edginess, marketability, characters et al.
I come up with at least a couple of “core ideas” a week. Title, main characters, general plot and theme, key scenes.
Of these, I further plot out maybe 1 in 10 in more detail. And a few of those get worked out even more. I have maybe 6 from the last couple of years that are partially written out and could be turned into full screenplays on short notice.
Maybe 6 years ago I started really writing things down in detail and found that I really enjoy doing that. Just something I do for my own amusement. (The thought of someone else reading them would be mega-writer’s block inducing.) Going back and looking at these is almost always fun. It’s interesting to note that sections I thought were weak at the time I was writing them are still obviously weak. It’s nice to know I can spot my own weaknesses. But still enjoy the rest.
I think this does help in being better able to appreciate/criticize real movie scripts. But it isn’t a requirement.
Ideas are the easy part. Turning them into a script is far more difficult.
Actually writing a script or a screenplay isn’t all that hard. There are any number of books that will walk you through the process step by step. It’s just 120 double spaced pages.
Now writing a good script… that’s hard. Getting it into the hands of a greenlighter - very difficult.
Since you are the one that started this thread, why don’t you give us a couple of your best?
I don’t think most people come up with original movie/show ideas. But they do have ideas they’d like to see in already existing universes. Hence the popularity of fanfiction.
Okay, I was afraid to share my movie ideas because anyone reading could take them and it wouldn’t be illegal AFAIK, but screw it, life’s too short and I could die today, so here goes:
The Towers: Titanic for the World Trade Towers. A woman engaged to be married to a jerk she doesn’t love (who works in the other World Trade Tower than she does) begins working at one of the World Trade Towers a week or two before 9/11. She meets and falls in love with a hunky pretty-boy Dicaprio type janitor/repairman who works in the same tower as her fiancé. He actually lives in the tower, because he’s homeless but friends with the people who own the World Trade Towers, and at night he has all the keys and is king of the World Trade Towers. He saves her in every way a person can be saved ;), then 9/11 happens and he dies like Jack in Titanic (not by freezing and drowning, though) and she survives and has a great life and doesn’t marry jerk.
Shooting up Harris High: Three guys decide to shoot up their 10 year high school reunion (dark comedy, parody of school shootings and gun violence and lots of other things). They plan for a week, then go, realize their classmates have changed and high school is not the end of life, decide not to do it, then some terrorists come to shoot up the place and they use their guns to kill them and save the school. Then they get laid.
Teen Movies Must Die: A Scream parody in which a masked killer kills off teenagers while reacting scenes from teen movies (Breakfast Club, Pump up the Volume, et al).
I have about 30 or 40 more, but those are my best.
Two ideas a week? Man, I thought I had an overactive imagination.
But I don’t ever write any of my ideas down, though, I just flesh them out in my head as new material comes to me.
- But it’s o.k. to have other posters to reveal their ideas to the public? How noble of you.
- It doesn’t matter, because, if those are your best ideas, you don’t have to worry about them getting stolen.
Big budget biopic of Sir Richard Francis Burton. I could see Hugh Jackman in the lead.
Okay, then let’s hear your ideas for masterpieces, Orson Welles. :rolleyes:
Check out post #16.
edited to add: Sir Richard Francis Burton lived life so large it might take two films to do him justice.
Oops, didn’t see your post before I posted.
Wow, great idea- and I’m not being sarcastic. Although a documentary was made about him and he has appeared in works of writing fiction, a major motion picture of a man so interesting should indeed be made (and Jackman would work, though I’d recommend Jeremy Irons myself, or maybe Gary Oldman). Can’t believe I’ve never really heard of the guy.
This reminds me of another idea I came up with recently, a major motion picture about the controversial shooting down of the plane Leslie Howard was in in WWII.
Oh, but I should add: Czarcasm, your idea is good, but it’s not like you dreamt up this guy’s life with your own imagination, as I did with my three ideas I shared. So poop on you.