“A History of Violence” has a scene like that, where the protagonist and his wife have sex on the staircase - very uncomfortable borderline-rape vibe. And that’s from, what, 2002?
What about The Wizard of Oz? Live action big budget musical adaptation of a 40-year-old children’s book with an entire race of people played by “little people”?
Although now I kinda wish that all the Harry Potter movies were musicals 
Nearly all the options listed here are technically possible. Hell, if that were the criteria, everything could be greenlighted.
I’m saying that Hollywood would not make a silent film simply because they wouldn’t think there was a big enough market for it.
If there is a market for it, why has it remained untapped for over 30 years?
I was saying that most silent movies were silent because of technical limitations rather than artistic choice. If you could come up with a movie with an artistic choice of silence, I think it might get made. I don’t see any huge hurdle… provided it was, of course, awesome. It’s not about the market, it’s about the idea.
Richard Pryor co-wrote it. It’s not as if people back in '74 were unconcious about race issues and wary of using the word nigger.
A type of movie that I don’t see coming back in vogue again very soon (except as indie productions) are the type of bleak anti-hero movies of the late 60’s to late 70’s. Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver and the like don’t have any happy endings and that’s almost a must for a big studio to get involved today. The audience, so the studios tell us, don’t want morally ambiguous characters or endings that make them feel down.
Also - a remake of a proven concept (GWTW) would have a bigger chance to get made than if Robert Towne were to pitch Chinatown for the first time today.
*Brief Encounter, *one of the greatest films of all time, but way too slow-paced and anti-climactic (literally and figuratively) for today’s audiences. Today, they would have wound up in bed in the first half-hour.
The Narnia movies are live action, big budget movie adaptions of decades-old children’s novels, although they’re not musicals. The use of dwarfs as Munchkins was simply a response to technical limitations of the day. You wouldn’t see that anymore not because of changing social mores, but simply because it’s easier to cast people who can act, and then CGI them down to size, then to try to find enough actors who are short enough for the role.
Taxi Driver didn’t have a happy ending? Jodie Foster is safe and Travis is considerd a hero. How is that unhappy? He was literally the rain that washed the scum off the streets.
Blazing Saddles is to then what “Epic Movie”, “Date Movie”, “Scary Movie” is to now. Today it would just be called “Western Movie”.
I don’t think The Love Guru will be greenlighted today.
The Narnia films have already been mentioned – but what about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, made 41 years after the original book – though with only one actor playing all the “little people”.
You take that back!
I don’t think it was happy so much as ironic from the perspective of the movie’s audience. Keep in mind Travis Bickle’s original plan was to assassinate the presidential candidate he was stalking. He actually came within a hairbreadth of accomplishing his task until he was spotted in the crowd by the Secret Service agents. That forced Bickle to make a last-second change of plans and shoot Foster’s character’s pimp and few johns instead. Granted, it was a good thing that Foster’s character was saved from a life in prostitution but Bickle (who seems to likely have gotten off on an insanity defense) still has a number of untreated mental problems and delusions that make him a dangerously unstable person who could go off at any time.