This has come up before. I agree that a riveting movie can be made out of the European discovery of porcelain.
After the first Spider Man movie, I had what I thought was a great idea for a Spider Man sequel, completely ignoring the fact that 25 years of comic books provide more than enough material.
A few years after the first Spider-Man movie takes place, a 14-year-old boy, who is seriously unpopular in school, decides that, more than anything else in the world, he wants to be just like Spider Man. He decides to recreate the accident that transformed Peter Parker. Let’s call the teenager “Ralph Riker.”
Ralph gets a spider, sneaks into a lab, and infuses the spider with radiation, then makes it bite him. Unfortunately, the result is not quite what he intended. Rather than appearing human with spider powers, he turns into a grotesque spider-person, with eight hairy hook-tipped limbs, sharp, poisonous fangs, and a thirst for human blood. Still able to pass as human, he stalks the city streets at night, preying on innocent victims all over the city, sucking them dry and leaving them wrapped in spider silk for the baffled police to find the next morning.
Soon, Spider Man finds out about this series of events and must track Ralph down and stop the killing. Ralph, though, far from having changed into a soulless evil monster, still has human feelings and is horrified at what he has become. Spider Man must balance his feelings of disgust for what Ralph has done with his feelings of compassion for the person still inside, who, after all, has come to be what he was due to hero worship of Spider Man.
Of course, it will never be made, but what the heck, you know?
I think a Romeo/Juliet style movie in which the girl is Jewish and the boy is a member of the Hitler Youth would be interesting if well-done (following it several years of course).
I agree with Askia that a good movie could be made about Nat Turner (though I wouldn’t adapt Styron as I thought he had characterizations all wrong).
I have an idea for a reincarnation thriller that centers on a Greek artifact housed during WW2 in Göring’s palace at Carinhall, but I’ll spare you the details.
I think a Romeo/Juliet style movie in which the girl is from a secular Jewish family and the boy is a member of the Hitler Youth would be interesting if well-done (following it several years of course). (Or, a Romeo Juliet remake set at Harvard with the son of a Palestinian diplomat and the daughter of an Israeli statesman.)
I agree with Askia that a good movie could be made about Nat Turner (though I wouldn’t adapt Styron as I thought he had characterizations all wrong).
I have an idea for a reincarnation thriller that centers on a Greek artifact housed during WW2 in Göring’s palace at Carinhall, but I’ll spare you the details.
Jesus Begins?
Also, this guy’s story.
I know nothing of comics yet, but I remember an ep. of the cartoon Spiderman where universes collide and he joins forces/fights like 9 different types of spidermans! Like, a robotic spiderman from a future reality, a more mutant spiderman I think, etc.
I’ve also thought about the future of superhero movies, and how to make them not suck- which they may not, we don’t know yet. What about a movie that uses mucho poetic license and combines a bunch of superheros into one violent and dark story? The franchises ain’t gonna let that happen, though… 
Very good, wayward! I was thinking about that guy recently and about how his situation is like the set-up to a lot of movies- a LOT of movies! Like, any movie or tv show where some guy is either mentally handicapped or has lost his memory wakes up somewhere with some information he remembers, and later on either he or the people around him use the info to unlock some great mystery! Like, aliens put this guy on earth with these few songs in his head to present a message to us, based on sounds from the Golden record launched into space 30 years ago; he’s nothing but a human communication device, like the guy in Third Rock from the Sun. He holds the key to the future of our species.
Er… or, in my mind, at least…
One of those “I’ll sue if anybody actually does it and it’s a hit” things, but… I was thinking tonight about when I was a kid and saw STAR WARS for the first time, and of course how much has changed since then. It would probably work better as a play than as a film, but it could be interesting to have a story in which somebody’s life is visited over the course of STAR WARS movie premieres. (I started this thread due to retrospective thinking of it.)
Think how simple the set for a play would be: a row of movie theater seats with nothing changing but the movie poster and perhaps some superficial changes to seating and sound. (Again, use it without permission and fear my wrath… [Vader breath]).
The 1960 film Spartacus (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054331/) was based on a 1933 historical novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. The 2004 TV movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361240/) was based on the same novel. But a much better-researched fictional account of the rebellion can be found in Fortune’s Favorites, by Colleen McCullough – http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0380710838/qid=1116617674/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/102-8052781-0422517?v=glance&s=books&n=507846. I’d like to see a more historically accurate movie about the Third Servile War – one that makes clear that Spartacus was not a slavery abolitionist in the modern sense but merely rebelling against his own status within the system, and that many of his followers, possibly the bulk of them, were not slaves, but free Samnites who were restive under Roman rule and trying to take the Social War of the previous decade into extra innings.
Stranger
Ahem (just clearing my throat)
Anyways, I had another idea that I stole from Philip K. Dick type stuff (only the movie versions, I haven’t read his stories) like Minority Report (eh :rolleyes: ). I would prob. call it ‘In Voluntary Service’ (joke on ‘involuntary’ 
), about a future in which convicted criminals of a certain nature are given a choice between death or having a chip inserted that turns them into zombie-like beings who obey the commands of police officers who use them to do dangerous assignments and the like. The reward at the end of your service is being put on a life support system that occupies their brains forever in a vegetated state of happiness. And no, one of the plot situations would not involve the human/robots going haywire- please give me more credit than that.
I was recently thinking an interesting movie would be a biopic about the Harlem Globetrotters. Had to be interesting in the early years. And I don’t mean a made-for-TV cheapie or one that features the stars of Gilligan’s Island.
Problem is, you would need actors with mad hoops skills – or somehow incorporate actual Globetrotter footage without making the movie feel like a documentary. That would tough. Also, production costs would be high with this period piece and B.O. probably couldn’t match it.
Pearl Harbor - the way it should have been done. Focusing on how the duty crew of the USS Nevada gets her underway during the attack and fights her. Then, when it becomes apparant that they won’t get out of the harbor without sinking manage to beach the ship without blocking the ONLY channel out of the harbor. Then continued fighting, even after the ship had sunk because her weather deck was still above water.
No Goddamned ARMY flyboys. Only one officer character (Okay, one and a half), and based on real events and real heros.
Lord of the Rings… In Space!
Simple country farm boy on remote, peaceful planet discovers that the eccentric old man he knows is in fact a powerful space wizard, and that he must embark on an epic quest to desroy an evil empire and… Hang on a minute!
Stolen from Empire magazine, c. 2001
I had one show idea I pulled out of you-know-where called ‘Crazy for Life’ about a middle-age psychiatrist woman, mother of two, who becomes counselor over a serial killer psycho (this is similar to Silence of the Lambs so far?) Only thing is, he is not quite as genius as Hannibal was, he is not creepy, and they will never, ever have a relationship; also, this isn’t much of a drama, so it’s not about how he murdered people or him escaping ever from the jail. It’s about a woman who comes to befriend this man, and how, eventually, she begins taking advice from him about dating, kids etc. and tells him about her ex-husband and such! It never turns into anything terrible, it’s just a peculiar-ass show, to say the least.
Not a sitcom.
This reminds me of the tale (how much was true?) of Kaspar Hauser.