http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/12/4/195512/550
Asimov's "I, Robot" on the big screen at last... sort of (Culture) By
noodles Sat Dec 7th, 2002 at 03:34:59 AM EST
Yet another Hollywood travesty. I know a lot of folks out there must be
Asimov fans, so I thought you might want to know, a film called "I,
Robot" is being made. But according to the news, it's NOT the Ellison
treatment, and it's not the Asimov story, even adapted. The studio just
bought the rights to the name.
The film, then called "Hardwired", apparently started out as yet another
ho-hum robots-trying-to-take-over-the-world film. No big deal there. One
more piece of screenplay-by-committee out of Hollywood isn't news. In the
last year, though, someone at Fox came up with a really great marketing
idea. Buy the rights to just the name from a famous work of classic
science fiction, use that, then make a series of crappy
robots-try-to-take-over-the-world movies, but they would almost be
guaranteed money-makers because fans would be expecting something good
(to wit, the story attached to that title for the last few decades). The
original article on CNN that got me all in a huff is here. Here's a link
to the Coming Attractions page on Hardwired, er "I Robot". It has a
pretty good history of the project. I tried to link directly to it from
within their normal site navigation, but they've got some wacky frame
setup. First link is to the main site, second is the page specifically
about the film. The tragedy in all this is that Harlan Ellison wrote up
an amazing screenplay based on "I, Robot" something like 20 years ago and
the studios have been refusing to move forward with it ever since.
Something about actual quality seems to repel most Studio execs like
garlic to a vampire. Go figure. In the early 90's, Ellison finally
managed to at least get the screenplay published in book form and it is
excellent. It would be an amazing movie, and undoubtedly a blockbuster.
Thanks to the special logic used by Hollywood execs, though, we may never
see it made. Perhaps though, if this use-an-existing-famous-title
marketing strategy works out for them, we may at least see some other
familiar titles. I for one would love to see the Foundation Trilogy. Of
course, that title would be attached to a film about robots trying to
take over the galaxy. Perhaps "Atlas Shrugged" could be slapped on Bill
Gates' dramatized biography. "Snow Crash" could be used to sell a movie
about a virtual reality ski resort where a crazed killer stalks ski
bunnies and ski instructors who are up to their usual crazy hijinks.
Perhaps the Alan Dean Foster Humanx novel titles could be put on some of
the new "Alien" sequels, sell a few more tickets ... people like those
titles, right? Ishtar could be renamed/repacked as "Dune" - they both
involve a desert, right? Hey, maybe we could extend this to other
things... if "Will Smith" was renamed "James Earl Jones", we could sell
the movie as "I, Robot", starring James Earl Jones, and the great thing
is we wouldn't have to have either the story or the actor! Wow! This is
so clever! As I'm coming across more articles arond the net, I'm seeing
more spin/market suggesting that it's an adaptation, but it's not. This
project existed - apparently in preproduciton hell - for a few years
before being reanimated by the simple notion of buying and using the
title of something that people would actually pay money to see. It's not
"I, Robot", it's a robot story called "I, Robot". Does anyone understand
hollywood logic? They want to build a multimillion dollar.. 'bird'...
they plan to give it some feathers, a beak maybe, and a bunch of other
stuff that they figure bird-lovers like to see on birds, then they buy
the rights to use the title 'Duck'. Only, it barely resembles a duck,
doesn't much smell like a duck, and only occasionally shows as much life
as a duck. The industry insists on calling it a duck tho. All right,
fine. But what if an actual duck was available? "I, Robot" has been out
there, with a top-notch screenplay, just waiting to be made for decades.
It's not like the studio is having to settle for a half-baked effort...
they have money and opportunity to make the actual adaptation that
millions of fans would love to see and love to pay for. I'm just trying
to understand why. Is that fair?
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