Yes, yes, I know what they are. But they both came out at roughly the same time and had similar looking trailers.
Two different companies were working on highly publicized King Kong remakes back in 1975. Only one of them got made, though. It would’ve been no great loss if it hadn’t.
Nice one!
It’s simpler than that. When a decent script is written it’s pitched to all the studio execs and sold to the highest bidder. Therefore just about everyone has read the thing before a single actor is cast and a scene shot. If there’s something you like but the other studio has a lock on it you can probably get a working script up and running in time to start shooting within weeks of what the original is.
Penguins (already mentioned)
Fish (Finding Nemo/Shark’s Tale)
Zoo animals (Madagascar/The Wild)
I just see it as cashing in on whatever the hot idea is at the moment.
Don’t forget Red Planet and Mission to Mars in 2000.
What about 18 Again?
Let’s see…
Like Father Like Son – 1987
Big – 1988
Vice Versa – 1988
18 Again – 1988
The two Freaky Friday movies were released in 1976 and 2003.
Just finished reading To Infinity and Beyond, the history of Pixar (fantastic book, highly recommended) and it’s not said straight out but heavily implied that Antz came about because Dreamworks wanted to steal Pixar’s thunder and already knew that Bug’s Life was in the works. The book says that Dreamworks promised Pixar that Antz would not release until after Bug’s Life, but then released it before.
And then they did it again in 2000, with *Shreck * and Monsters Inc. (although here, the similarity wasn’t as great).
Shrek, which featured plenty of unsubtle swipes at Disney.
There was a spate of Rwanda set movies in a short period of time too.
Hotel Rwanda, Shooting Dogs and I think one or two other ones.
The General (1998) and Ordinary Decent Criminal (2000) are essentially based on the same Irish criminal although the details in the latter were changed when the first production became known to the film makers.
Prefontaine (1997)
Without Limits (1998)
Both biographies of a relatively obscure American distance runner who had been dead for over 20 years.
There was a movie called “Outbreak” with Dustin Hoffman that came out right after the Ebola scare and the publication of the book “The Hot Zone”. I seem to recall that there was another ebola film at the saem time, but I can’t remember what it was called.
And yet Monster’s Inc. was still (IMHO) the better movie.
IMHO as well, and I still thought they were both pretty good.
Braveheart and Rob Roy were fairly close to each other. A reporter asked Mel Gibson how two Scottish-themed movies could go into production simultaneously, at rival studios. He said “It’s either the Collective Unconscious, or corporate espionage.”
If television shows are permissible, I nominate Captain Nice and Mr. Terrific. Both were released in 1967. Captain Nice was clever and entertaining, while Mr. Terrific was thudding and snooze-inducing. Ultimately, the bad drove out the good, and both were canceled.
To Wong Foo and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
If you count TV movies, there are often competing movies to capitalize on the same recent events from different stations. As an example there were at least two Liberace movies following his death, I think they were even on during the same week.
Well, it’s likely that one Harlow (usually referred to as The Electronovision version) was rushed into production in order to steal the thunder of the other. It was released about five weeks earlier, and was shot using what was basically videotape and was very low budget, though most critics say Lynley was a better performance. But it caused confusion with the Baker version (it didn’t help that both actresses had essentially the same first name), and neither did particularly well.
Studios tended to avoid that sort of thing after that. The textbook example is when Warner Brothers bought the rights to The Tower and Fox bought the rights to The Glass Inferno at about the same time. Both movies were about a fire in a skyscraper and the two studios got together to combine the two into The Towering Inferno, which worked out pretty well for them.
What, no United 93 and World Trade Center yet?
OK, different parts of the same event-complex, but still.