It reminded me of the Truman Capote/In Cold Blood films, Capote and Infamous, both made around the same time, and also of The Adventures of Priscilla and the one with Patrick Swayze in drag - both with the same premise, but one so odd that some people had difficulty accepting that no plagiarism had occurred.
I feel like I’ve heard of films being delayed or abandoned because someone else snuck in ahead with the same idea. Anyone know of any other examples like this?
My understanding is that most of these events are coincidental and the studios realize it when they’re already committed to the project. You wouldn’t want to intentionally split your audience like that after putting that much money into the film.
I’ve noticed this phenomenon more than I can explain away as coincidence. There has to be something shady going on. Actually, I just found an entire page on TV Tropes about this, though with a quick skim I don’t agree with many of them.
I can’t imagine what. If anything, a studio might be inclined to delay a release because of this. Few people are going to say “Wow, that was a great volcano movie, now let’s go see the other one!” or “Man, that asteroid movie sucked but maybe the other one is better… let’s go!”
2003 brought us Gods & Generals and Cold Mountain. Not really identical plots but both Civil War dramas. I mainly remember because, a few years later, I saw singer Mary Fahl do a show where she opened for a song with “This was from a Civil War movie a few years back. Not Cold Mountain. God, I wish it had been Cold Mountain…”
Dark City and the Matrix are only superficially similar, and have completely different plots and narratives. **The 13th Floor **and **the Matrix **are both about virtual reality worlds where the characters aren’t sure what’s real and the audience is pulled into the same questioning state. A sort of 2nd person omniscient narrative where we can follow everyone, but we’re seeing things from the characters’ perspective.
**Dark City **has a completely different plot (alien abduction and experimentation) and is from a 3rd person omniscient perspective. Yeah, the aliens create a fake city to house the abductees but there’s nothing virtual about it, nor does the movie ever try convince the audience the city is real. Unlike the characters, we know from the jump the city is fake and being manipulated - they show them shuffling characters and buildings constantly. We follow the characters to learn why the aliens are doing what they’re doing (pretty much the only cheesy element), focusing mostly on John Murphy’s character and Jennifer Connelly at her anime-template dream girl best.
Hell, they’re not even visually similar - one’s a SFX-laden cyperpunk shoot’em up, the other is German 1930s noir with effects that mimic magic more than anything. If the two films hadn’t come out close together, no one would try to link them. I could make a stronger case for **Dark City’s **similarity to The Wizard of Oz.
In televisionland 30 Rock and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip both debuted in the 2006-07 on the same network. Studio 60 actually had higher ratings, but 30 Rock was cheaper to produce.
are these really different from the surge of vampire/zombies/slasher/superhero/whatever movies? the suits think that whatever is the cash cow at that moment and approve more of them.
Maybe, but sometimes a crappy movie can ride on the coattails of a better one. Of the two Harlow films mentioned by RealityChuck, one was made in eight days to beat the release of the bigger budget version. And it seems The Cavern changed its title to be more resonant with the other similar releases at the time.
I’m sure groupthink is the culprit in some cases but seems unlikely for others such as Capote/Infamous. I think most of these are genuine coincidences due to the sheer volume of films made each year.