Friday, September 29, 2006

HONORABLE MEN

Q. I was working on a script for a low budget horror movie but stopped when a thematically similar big budget movie came out. My story was very, very different in tone and execution, but there when I went to see this movie, there were even some similar scenes
About the same time that Steven Spielberg came out with a movie about rampaging therapod dinosaurs, Roger Corman came out with a movie about, uh, rampaging therapod dinosaurs. When asked about the similarities in the movie premises, Corman said: "Steven Spielberg is an honorable man. I do not for a moment imagine that he would steal my idea."

1 comment:

Cunningham said...

Excellent.

I love the Jurassic Park-Carnosaur story.

Corman actually had the rights to the novel for many years then Crichton went and wrote JP.

His $1.5M investment paid off with a $4M gross for the first film, 3 sequels, and use of all the stock footage for other monster movies. He definitely "used all of the buffalo."

Your movies are always going to be compared to others - hell, that's how they're pitched - but you can't let that stop your opportunity to get your story made. If your script's genre is hot - then you had best capitalize on that and get it out there.