The Invisible Adaptation

Whenever I decide to write a new screenplay I look through my library of ideas and I compare them to what’s currently in production on imdb- and see if any trends correspond.

This time it occurred to me that I may be fucked.

What I noticed was that everything being made was based either on a novel, a comic book, a video game, or itself.

I immediately recalled going to dinner with a friend of mine who works as an exec at a huge studio and they said their boss held a meeting for all the departments- this was to determine the new direction their studio was to be headed. And they said “The studios are making money off of adapted material so I want you to buy the rights to everything you can.” To which my friend responded to us

“Can you believe that was his big advice? Duh!”

So lets track this a bit…

The novel has been adapted almost since the beginning of narrative film-making. You take a solid story in a book- or play- and you turn it into an Oscar-winning film. Anything from The Philadelphia Story, to The Godfather, to Lord of the Rings. It makes sense, they have an inherent audience from the original work- and those people want to see how their own imagination of the story translates to film.

This trend still continues today. Some projects in development include Atlas Shrugged, Water for Elephants, Wicked, and Life of Pi.

But, c’mon, this is Hollywood, and we can take it a step further. This town’s not afraid to “dumb it down a bit” when money’s to be made. After all, there’s a whole slew of comic books out there.

Hollywood has felt that comics have been legitimate sources of adaptation material for decades. Batman and Superman have been around since the 40s and have been remade numerous times since. The last few years have been no exception.

Christopher Nolan took the Batman franchise to a whole new level with Dark Knight- one of the top-grossing films to date. For a story that had been squeezed for all its worth, Nolan found new depths for these characters and this former comic book stands on its own next to our most respected novel adaptations.

That’s the extreme example. There’s still your Iron Man, your Spiderman, your Watchmen, and all the failed adaptations like Spawn, Ghost Rider, and The Hulk. Hollywood has found that whether they do well or not, people will go see them anyway.

So now there is a mad rush to turn anything that has ever been a comic into a movie.

From Marvel Enterprises alone we not only have The Avengers, but we have Captain America… Yes… one of the members of The Avengers… his own movie.

It seems like every character is getting their own movie now- combine that with a star name and you got Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury, and Tyrese Gibson as Luke Cage.

And then you have Columbia Pictures who’s putting Marc Webb, the director of 500 Days of Summer, in charge of the “reboot” of the entire Spiderman series.

What’s the bottom line? In the words of my studio exec friend, “Duh!” Money. These films make money. The rare exceptions win Oscars. But nothing is more important to Hollywood than money. And nothing pisses off Hollywood more than other industries making more money than they are.

And that’s exactly what happened when Halo 3 came out. It made $170 million in the first 24 hours it came out- something a feature film has never touched. The Dark Knight made $65 million in its first day, but that doesn’t hold a candle to Halo 3. I guarantee your kids favorite video games will be made into a movie if it did well enough financially. A glimpse at some upcoming titles in development…

Halo, Metal Gear Solid, Bioshock, Gears of War, Mass Effect, God of War, Splinter Cell, etc, etc...

So its proven that any adapted material can be financially lucrative. But what happens when a movie is successful and there’s more juice to squeeze? Well, adapted or not, as long as it has a built-in audience, they make a sequel…!

Ghostbusters 3, The Hangover 2, Transformers 3, Kill Bill: Vol 3, Terminator 5, Paranormal Activity 2, Underworld 4, Sin City 2 & 3 (yes, 3 has already been green-lit before 2 came out), Indiana Jones 5, Mission Impossible 4, Austin Powers 4,

I don’t know about you but that list always makes me pee my pants a little bit. But as a further reminder of how narrow-minded Hollywood can be, what do they do when they run out of fresh, adapted material and they still don’t want to take risks on original work… they remake everything all over again…

Child’s Play, Robocop, Dune, The Lone Ranger, The Birds(!), Tron, Hellraiser, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Blob, The Seven Samurai(!!)…

Notice that most of these movies are from the 80s. Since that was one of the most fucked up decades in the history of anything, I’m not surprised modern filmmakers think they can take those ideas and make them better.

I even had a meeting with Paramount’s online department when my show, The Bannen Way, was going into production at Sony and this guy offered to my partner and I the opportunity to adapt previous movies into Web Series. Yes, they were developing original works, but mainly they wanted to adapt from previous successes.

So what does this mean to a young screenwriter who wants to get his film career going when everything that is being bought is based on something else? What options do I have?

a) Write a book, comic, or… video game? Hmm… as easy as that sounds, they would still have to build a huge audience first.

b) Buy the rights to whatever’s available- in any medium- and pitch it as a film. Totally viable but how expensive will that be? Maybe I’ll get lucky and find a lost gem that everyone else overlooked but, truthfully, isn’t everyone looking for that kind of shit these days? I’d be competing against massive studios with greater resources.

c) Keep pitching fresh ideas and hope one of them sticks.

So here I sit wondering what my next screenplay is going to be about. I got tons of ideas. But having written half a dozen scripts that have “missed the mark” I’m much more precious with my time and energy.

The good news is there’s hope. I call it “The Invisible Adaptation”. Its simply taking an original idea and saying its loosely based on a classic piece of material. This isn’t a new concept, but simply a way to validate your project- to make you appear more well-read and give added meaning to your, otherwise, “boringly modern” story.

This has been done since the beginning of time, and a lot of them can be traced back to Shakespeare, which can, in turn, be traced to the ancient Greeks who likely originated the 7 (or 8, or however many is debated these days) basic storylines.

Not many know that Lion King was based on the story of Hamlet, or that West Side Story was based on Romeo and Juliet, or that The Magnificent Seven was based on Seven Samurai, or even that 10 Things I Hate About You was based on The Taming of the Shrew.

For some reason, this notion excites me. I sit forward, pitched at an angle over my keyboard, hungry to see which of my ideas can be blanketed with a classic theme, so that I can sit across from an executive, and whisper with a dainty gesture of my wrist

“By the way, this is loosely based on Homer’s The Odyssey”

And I expect him to have that look of realization on his face, that the story makes clearer sense and is immediately legitimized. For some reason, now he cares about the idea.

Who am I kidding? I’ll probably end up basing my next script on my own life- a story about a frustrated artist trying to make it in Hollywood.

At least that’s original.

[sigh]

~ JW