There has to be enough interest to get the thing green-lit by the studio, though. Then it has to bomb opening weekend.
That’s why the All Shatner Caesar is a good option. The studio will see the built-in Star Trek and Shakespeare fan bases, and figure it’s a two-franchise money factory, but not realize that the early reviews will kill it for both fandoms.
Han and Chewie Go Boating
Marooned on some shithole planet, the beloved, but belly-achin’ Star Wars characters find their intimate relations strangely linked to an expensively rendered parallel reality (populated by sentient toast) where nothing of actual interest ever happens very slowly, leading viewers to think something might happen by the end even though it never does. Expect withering word of mouth for this franchise-broadening art film to kill business inside a week and you’ve a surefire money-loser.
Empire – The Musical
Take Andy Warhol’s 8 + hour silent black and white movie, colorize it at great expense, and add a new score by somebody on the “%0 Worst Soundtrack” list. Maybe all of them. Eight hours is a lot of dead air to fill.
I’ll go with: The Simpsons - the Live Action Movie. Its main problem: some producer insisted on getting “names” to play Bart and Lisa, so they end up looking and sounding nothing like their animated counterparts. It will go over about as well as the Simpsons stamps that were released a few years ago.
In the plot of the original The Producers, Max Bialystock mulls over the idea of adapting Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” for a musical but rejects it as “too good”.
Why not make a movie musical of The Metamorphosis?*
Cats bombed as a movie, so one could expect an even greater disaster from a film featuring song and dance numbers inspired by Kafka’s masterpiece.
Not sure who to cast as family members and the rest of the protagonists, but Nicolas Cage seems like a natural for the role of Gregor Samsa.
*there was a previous film version of The Metamorphosis which I am glad to say I have never seen.
Two words
Oscar Bait
Maybe I’d use that as my producer pseudonym.
So, you want to fuck up a very popular concept with a big budget and popular stars?
Cats had the right idea, so how about a live action musical Bloom County? No CGI, just people dressed as the different characters. Danny DeVito as Opus (typecasting?) and Jim Carrey as Bill The Cat.
The problems with this is the built-in fan base will spend tons of money on opening weekend to see it before word gets out how much it sucks.
That’s an issue for the trailer guys to fix. With a bad enough trailer, no one will be chomping at the bit to go see it.
I think the movie trailers will kill that off.
Yes similar to how every decade SOMEBODY tries to make a new big budget Robin Hood or King Arthur movie and they almost never make money.
Another idea is bad modern remakes of classic films.
Does the world need a remake of Sergeant York? No, but I can see somebody greenlighting it, starring Chris Pratt as Sergeant York.
Snapper Carr, the movie.
Star Wars universe side-story; the Jar-Jar Chronicles.
This is probably the winner idea.
Anything like my idea in the earlier post could backfire and actually find an audience. But remaking movies that no one asked to be remade is a near certain failure. Spend enough money upfront and you can easily lose hundreds of millions.
I give you modern remakes of
Titanic
Gone With the Wind
Cleopatra (it lost tons the first time!)
The Longest Day
The Great Escape
and if you can figure out how to make it big budget
Casablanca
That seems like a harder sell than a whole movie about Robin where Batman never appears; sure, that’s kinda offbeat, but it could really connect with people, and you’ve got one heck of a built-in recognition factor.
My question is: can we afford Burt Ward?
A Doc Savage film- played straight. At least I’d enjoy it.
I think part of the problem is that the story of Robin Hood doesn’t really fire the imagination anymore. I wonder what made it successful the first time? Was it Errol Flynn’s performance that was captivating enough to elevate a swashbuckler into a classic?
It was the Great Depression, and people resented the banks, and the rich, and the government. People who would never vote Socialist, would cheer for Robin Hood.
I think pirate movies were popular for the same reason.
Dune Chapter 3. Timothee Chalamet out. Kirk Cameron in.
FWIW, the Costner version made a ton of money.