Hollywood Babble On & On #425: Freaking Franchises!

Welcome to the show folks...

SPIDER-MAN NEEDS A WRITER MAN

Sony Pictures, the current holder of the Spider-Man movie franchise is in a bit of a pickle. They had originally planned to release Spider-Man 4 in May 2011.

Planned being the operative word, because plans don't usually last beyond the first shot of a battle, and director Sam Raimi has fired that first shot. Or to be more specific, he's fired the script out the window.

Raimi is unhappy with the script, and is waiting for screenwriter Alvin Sargent to deliver a new one, and that could take some time.

Now I can understand the reason why Raimi tossed the script and started over from scratch, and it can all be boiled down to one word: CONFIDENCE.

Raimi had too much confidence during the making of Spider-Man 3, and that led to scenes like this:

Shudder.

Your ego must be on overdrive to make you think that scene belonged in any movie outside of a bit on The Simpsons where they make fun of badly made movies.

The film made a lot of money, but Raimi got reamed by embittered fans, for having too many villains, and not enough story, and thanks to the internet there was no way to hide from it.

That's bound to make you realize that your every brain-fart isn't the reincarnation of Orson Welles, and in Raimi's case it looks like it shook him to the core.

I estimate that he doesn't want to make the same mistake twice, and go back to the elements that made 1 and 2 not only financially successful, but satisfying to fans and non-fans alike.


YOU CANNOT ESCAPE MR. BOND, BWAH-HAH-HAH!!!

In other franchise news the next James Bond movie has been delayed, possibly indefinitely by MGM's ongoing money troubles.

This could very well be a trap that not even 007 can escape. The Bond movies are a license to print money, and pretty much the only thing keeping the 99 & 44/100% dead studio on life support.

If they can't make more Bond films, they can't make the sort of heavy cash they need to get out of the hole the company is in. If they can't get out of that hole, they might have to sell Bond to another studio, and then guess what will happen. The new owner will want their own people to run the franchise, and put their own "brand" on it, and suddenly everyone's favorite suave British spy will become a rough and tumble Yankee bad-ass who drives around Los Angeles in an SUV, with a sass-talking kid sidekick.

That would be bad, very, very bad.

So let's hope MGM fixes its problems soon and can get things rolling again.