Hollywood Babble On & On #861: If At First You Don't Succeed.... Flog A Dead Horse.

TERRA NOVA GOES EXTINCT

The Fox Network has axed the science fiction dino-drama Terra Nova, refusing to renew it for a second season.  The reasons the network dropped the other shoe is that the show cost too much, and delivered too little in the form of ratings.  Now I've always been cynical of the show, feelings it's premise was too limited, the characters too cliche, and there were huge logic holes like humanity inventing time travel, but forgetting everything learned about pollution control learned since the industrial revolution, and the stupidity of settling people in a time where they know that a big comet will eventually and inevitably come down and wipe them all out.

The whole show reeked of something formed by committee, as seen by its revolving door of people involved in developing the show, the multiple show-runners it went through during its run, and it's see-sawing quality.  I was expecting that they would have given it a second season in the vain hope of recouping their investment before finally giving up.

And speaking of giving up, the producers of the show have declared that they will not give up and are going to shop the show to other networks.

My advice: Let it die.

That sort of big scale science fiction adventure series needs a singular and equally big vision behind it, not just a big budget, and a big ad campaign.

So let Terra Nova go extinct, and find someone with an idea with legs, and run with that.

HEFNER MOVIE FINDS NEW HOME

The long gestating and often passed around bio-pic of Hugh Hefner has found a new home at Warner Bros with producer Jerry Weintraub.

The question on everyone's lips is "Why?"

A good biopic needs a good ending. It needs a brilliant triumph, or a terrible tragedy. Not the sad pathetic fizzling of a man from sexual iconoclast to irrelevant punchline.

Now I suspect that this round of development is going to end like all the other attempts, and the movie won't get made.

However, I also suspect that Hollywood will still keep trying to get it made.

Why?

Because Hollywood is the last place on Earth that still thinks Hefner's still relevant.  They don't realize that where they see a symbol of the sexual freedom of the 1960 and 1970s, the rest of the world sees a lecherous old coot chasing women so similar and plasticized in appearance that it shows a very obvious failure of the imagination.

That image of lechery, senility, and banality will attach itself to any movie made about the man, but Hollywood can't see it, because it's also on them.