MAD Magazine had an “interview with a TV network executive” back in the '60s. He showed how networks came up with different shows using a “Switcheroo” board, which basically turned series concepts on their heads. Examples:
Beverly Hillbillies (country folks in the city) --> Green Acres (city folks in the country);
Cara Williams (a couple who pretend they’re not married) --> Occasional Wife (a couple who pretend they are married).
I just realized Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, My Favorite Martian, My Living Doll, and Mr Ed were basically the same concept: an average Joe lucks out in having a wife/girlfriend/“uncle”/“roommate”/horse with magic(al) powers, but has to keep it a secret from everyone else.
There are certainly others, too, but these are the ones that come immediately to mind.
Reviving this thread for this little discovery: Craig Robinson was featured in two comedies about the Biblical apocalypse, both released June 2013: This Is the End and Rapture-Palooza.
Not quite the same thing but here goes. Back in the 70’s two *books * were published. One was The Glass Tower, and the other was The Inferno. They got mashed together into a single movie, The Towering Inferno.
Getting back to this a little late:
Aladdin/The Thief and the Cobbler, RDJ Sherlock Holmes movies and two TV series, James Bond (A View to a Kill/Never Say Never Again), Two Linda Lovelace biopics in simultaneous development and only one got released, Boogie Nights/Wonderland (which were a few years apart), Superman Returns/Hollywoodland. Some of these were closer together than others, most were pretty damn close. I feel comfortable including two John Holmes movies because it’s weird that one was made ever and there were two of them within a few years of each other.
The movie industry term is “parallel development” and happens all the time. It does make sense – some writer at a studio is brainstorming for ideas that haven’t been done before, and thinks: “Aha! An asteroid threatens the earth and we send a bunch of blue-collar oil workers into space to destroy it!” Meanwhile, a separate writer at another studio across town brainstorms an idea that’s almost identical, which both came up with solely due to the fact that the idea hasn’t been done before (or at least, hasn’t been done recently.)
Sometimes, the movie studio will buy out rival productions working on similar ideas, though obviously not always. I believe Oliver Stone did this while filming Alexander.
The Thief and the Cobbler had been in production with various starts and stops since the late 60s. And wouldn’t be released in the US until 1995. Can it really count?
RDJ Sherlock Holmes movies and two TV series
Not a set of parallel movies.
James Bond (A View to a Kill/Never Say Never Again)
Sure, OK. I forgot how close Never Say Never Again was to a real Bond movie.
Two Linda Lovelace biopics in simultaneous development and only one got released
The Thief and the Cobbler languished for decades, but within the animation community, it was well-known and widely-seen. Aladdin even cribbed some elements of it, like Jafar’s look.
They examined different aspects of the Superman story, both in 2006. This is out, but Braveheart/Rob Roy are in? How situational are our criteria here?
Why would Braveheart/Rob Roy be in? That said, at least they’re both movies about Scottish folk heroes. Superman Returns is a Superman movie and Hollywoodland is a movie about an actor who played Superman. They’re not similar at all.
Hollywoodland was a movie about a guy whose only notable accomplishment was playing Superman and whose role in shaping the character is as important in the Superman mythos as Jerry Siegel, Joe Schuster and Curt Swan. He was portrayed by an actor whose most notable accomplishments to future generations will be that he played Batman, Daredevil, and Superman (with an asterisk). It’s as much a Superman movie as any explicit Superman movie and more of one than at least three I can think of.
Super and Kick-ass were released the same year I think. Both were about regular people becoming superheroes. Kick-ass was a lot better, though a lot more over the top.
If I can throw in a comic example, I’m certain that on the same day Dennis the Menace was first published an almost identical character coincidentally premiered in some other country (Russia?). I can’t think of the name and nothing I type into google seems to bring it up. Anyone know what I’m talking about?
EDIT: Apparently it was in England and the character had the same name, but it wasn’t exactly the same day. Not sure where I got Russia from.
One of the more interesting was the case of The Last Emperor, Bernardo Berttolucci’s 1987 film and The Last Emperor Li-Han Hsiang’s 1986 film released in English in 1987. Both were biograpjhies of Pu=Yi, the last vEmperor of cHina, but the films aren’t duplicates of each other. The Chinese film actually concentrates on Pu-Yi’s life after “rehabilitation”, which Bertolucci’s film doesn’t devote much time to, so the films complement each other well…