Maybe you, my wise and fragrant readers, can answer me this question.
How come the only way Hollywood exceeds my expectations is in the field of stupidity?
Sweet mother of Cthulu, sometimes I wonder is somebody's dropping stupid potion into the Evian and Perrier supply of the Greater Los Angeles area, because I can't really pierce the multiple layers of cognitive dissonance that goes into most Hollywood decisions.
If you follow my inane antics on twitter, then you probably know that I like to make fun of studio notes. Studio notes are those little neural farts that executives like to stink up movies and television with, either to show what they think is their brilliance, or to expose their own insecurities. In these notes they nitpick everything into oblivion, including the very essence of what makes a project commercially viable.
Well, they just topped my worst imaginings, and I want them to stop.
Their latest victim of Hollywood's bastardization
machine is the venerable English mystery maven Miss Marple, created by Agatha Christie. Miss Marple is an elderly spinster living in the quaint village of St. Mary Mead who has a penchant for solving murders through a keen power of observation, shrewd deductive skills, the ability to get people to open up to her, and literally decades of life experience. The character has been successfully adapted many times, most recently with a very successful series of TV movies in Britain.
Well, the Walt Disney Company has seen those many years of success and they want some of that for themselves. They've paid the Christie estate what has to be some pretty good coin for an option on the character, and have hired a writer to handle the adaptation.... no, wait, adaptation is the wrong word, the mot juste would be mutilation.
You see Disney has paid money for the character, but they don't actually want the actual character. What they want is to slap the commercially viable Miss Marple name onto what would be the pretty much new creation of a 30ish-40ish year old female detective.
That's right, Disney has paid money for something they are not going to use, chiefly the character, and everything about her, except her name. There are reasons behind the creation of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, one of them being an observation by Christie that English people of her generation tended to speak more freely around old women and foreigners than they did around each other, making them great repositories of secrets and sins. To ditch such an essential element of the character, namely, her age, is to essentially ditch the character.
An odd decision in an age where several actresses, like Helen Mirren or Judi Dench, could star as Marple and either sell tickets or score good TV ratings, depending on the nature of the project. (Most likely television since big screens are pretty much exclusively for big overwrought productions over the more contained mayhem of murder mysteries.)
What's next for Disney? Well, I'll bet dollars to donuts that they're planning another collaboration with the Christie estate, all they need to figure out is who would best play her Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot: Vin Diesel or Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
UPDATE: Disney has cast their lovable inquisitive spinster and it's Jennifer Garner.
But don't worry, she will be wearing her "smart glasses," so everything will be all right.
How come the only way Hollywood exceeds my expectations is in the field of stupidity?
Sweet mother of Cthulu, sometimes I wonder is somebody's dropping stupid potion into the Evian and Perrier supply of the Greater Los Angeles area, because I can't really pierce the multiple layers of cognitive dissonance that goes into most Hollywood decisions.
If you follow my inane antics on twitter, then you probably know that I like to make fun of studio notes. Studio notes are those little neural farts that executives like to stink up movies and television with, either to show what they think is their brilliance, or to expose their own insecurities. In these notes they nitpick everything into oblivion, including the very essence of what makes a project commercially viable.
Well, they just topped my worst imaginings, and I want them to stop.
Their latest victim of Hollywood's bastardization
machine is the venerable English mystery maven Miss Marple, created by Agatha Christie. Miss Marple is an elderly spinster living in the quaint village of St. Mary Mead who has a penchant for solving murders through a keen power of observation, shrewd deductive skills, the ability to get people to open up to her, and literally decades of life experience. The character has been successfully adapted many times, most recently with a very successful series of TV movies in Britain.Well, the Walt Disney Company has seen those many years of success and they want some of that for themselves. They've paid the Christie estate what has to be some pretty good coin for an option on the character, and have hired a writer to handle the adaptation.... no, wait, adaptation is the wrong word, the mot juste would be mutilation.
You see Disney has paid money for the character, but they don't actually want the actual character. What they want is to slap the commercially viable Miss Marple name onto what would be the pretty much new creation of a 30ish-40ish year old female detective.
That's right, Disney has paid money for something they are not going to use, chiefly the character, and everything about her, except her name. There are reasons behind the creation of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, one of them being an observation by Christie that English people of her generation tended to speak more freely around old women and foreigners than they did around each other, making them great repositories of secrets and sins. To ditch such an essential element of the character, namely, her age, is to essentially ditch the character.
An odd decision in an age where several actresses, like Helen Mirren or Judi Dench, could star as Marple and either sell tickets or score good TV ratings, depending on the nature of the project. (Most likely television since big screens are pretty much exclusively for big overwrought productions over the more contained mayhem of murder mysteries.)
What's next for Disney? Well, I'll bet dollars to donuts that they're planning another collaboration with the Christie estate, all they need to figure out is who would best play her Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot: Vin Diesel or Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
______________
UPDATE: Disney has cast their lovable inquisitive spinster and it's Jennifer Garner.But don't worry, she will be wearing her "smart glasses," so everything will be all right.
Nah, for Poirot they'd get Jean-Claude Van Damme. Then when people march on the offices to demand an explanation they'd say "What's the problem? He's Belgian, right?"
ReplyDeleteI can't comment to the lady's actual intelligence, but I will say -
ReplyDeleteThe only time she's ever been convincing is when she's trying to portray a stupid character.
Train. Wreck.
Granted, I'm still reeling from the 'Three Musketeers and Airships' trailer...
Looks like a train wreck, Heck I am writing a Sonny With a Chance/So Random SPEC script about the same thing, Clueless Network Heads making stupid and unnecessary changes to a show.
ReplyDeleteThis would only work one way, If it was a Miss Marple in the early days, then it will would probably work.
I desperately want to believe this is an early April Fools joke.
ReplyDeleteWow, that's too depressing. Let's veer off topic.
ReplyDeleteTheir latest victim of Hollywood's bastardization machine is the venerable English mystery maven Miss Marple, created by Agatha Christie. Miss Marple is an elderly spinster living in the quaint village of St. Mary Mead who has a penchant for solving murders through a keen power of observation, shrewd deductive skills, the ability to get people to open up to her, and literally decades of life experience. The character has been successfully adapted many times, most recently with a very successful series of TV movies in Britain.
Wasn't that also Murder She Wrote? (the realization makes everything that much stupider)