Props to Shakespeare: O2

You know what's great about William Shakespeare? Fuckin' lots. Everyone loves him. College professors. Teachers. Hipsters. Critics. Actors. You mention Shakespeare, and brother, Flint wasn't in like this. Second, he's old. Dead for centuries old. Which means adapting his work is free. Also, his themes and plays are totally still relevant and accessible to people of our times according to a Google search I just did. In other words: Money in the bank, baby!

Now, we have to be discerning, right, because everyone does Hamlet. Boring. Everyone does Romeo and Juliet. Boring. Everyone does Macbeth. Boring. Know what everyone doesn't do? Othello. Now we don't want to go crazy adapting that to a movie because haters wanna hate and people get mad when you mess with a classic, so instead you do a sequel. We call it, get this, O2.

The O stands for Othello.

Now I can hear you saying, "But wait, didn't everyone die at the end?" Yes. We can work around that. What if... we set it in space? Now we can have cloning. Oh? What? Othello just killed Desdemona and then himself? Fuckin' cloned. Done. But that's still messing with a classic, and believe you me, you do not want a Shakespeare nerd mad at you. So we keep the original exactly as is, same dumb speaking and everything. Only he gets cloned two thousand years in the future. Now of course, if we bring him back, we have to bring back Desdemona and Iago too. You gotta have a love interest and if we already have a villain why waste time coming up with a new one?

So here's what we do, because we gotta have action, explosions, crazy shit like that. I mean, we're in f'n space here. Let's not let that golden opportunity go to waste. Iago gets cloned first. "That's dumb," I can hear you saying. Know what I say?

"You're dumb, now sit down and shut the fuck up! What has two thumbs and pitched a thousand blockbusters? This guy. What has two thumbs and paid to see them? You. Get the picture? Good."

Iago gets cloned because the space courts have decided, after reviewing his case, that he got off light. People who get off light, especially people who are dead or sentenced to multiple life sentences get cloned and are forced to serve all of their terms. So space court says Iago needs to be punished more. He gets cloned and they lock him up in space prison for clones with other bad guys like Space Hitler and Space Castro and Space Whoever We Hate At The Time. That's right. We've got Space Nazis, Space Commies, and Space Terrorists. You know shit's gonna get real, amirite?

Now Iago is a sneaky persuasive bastard, and we're going to keep him talking in Shakespeare speech because it will really help the audience to hate him. Well, he gets to talking and because he's so slick and charming, people start listening. Soon, he's got his finger in the space president's ear and bam! he's out of jail and conning people. He's taken over, and now he's seized production of the air supplies (because this is space and you need air in space).

The O stands for Oxygen (Get it? It's called O2 like air and like Othello 2).

Of course, some space rebels realize what's what and they go and clone Othello, who has a serious vendetta against Iago. Did I mention that Othello's a general? Not kidding. This is in Shakespeare's original play. It's like he handed us a gift. If Othello's already a general, then the Shakespeare die hards will praise the movie for it's authenticity, which means we'll get all the rich white people to show up, who will buy the shit out of O2 merchandising.

Right, so Othello starts commanding an army, blowing shit up. Nuking worlds. Like you do. But we need a love interest, so Iago clones Desdemona, only he brainwashes her, right? So she's all like "Othello, I love you. You're so great. Let's go do this thing over here." He's using her to throw Othello off track, and get this, to nuke anyone who stands in Iago's way. Once again, Iago tricks Othello, only this time his wife actually IS deceiving him. Plot twist! Also, mad hot reuniting sex scene (maybe multiple Desi clones for a reuniting orgy scene? What do you think?)

So the whole time, we think Othello's getting duped, and things are at their worst. Iago controls all the breathable air in the universe and he's charging crazy high prices so people can't afford it. But then he pretends he's being generous by saying that he'll give the air away for free to anyone who supports him for Space Emperor (which is higher than Space President). That's when Othello takes his cybernetic squad of super soldiers called MOORS (Mutant Omega Operations Robot Soldier) who charge Iago's station and kick ass, killing people and taking names. As the soldiers are blowing the crap out of everything, Othello gets into the throne room where Iago has installed himself and standing between them is Desdemona, who Iago has given ninja implants. It looks like Othello is going to have to kill her again if he wants his vengeance.

But wait! Plot twist AGAIN! Othello gives an impassioned speech about love and forgiveness to Desdemona, which we think will win her over. It doesn't. In reality, Desi isn't double crossing him. She's TRIPLE crossing Iago! Othello cloned her ahead of time and only made Iago THINK he controlled her so Othello could get to the bottom of Iago's plans. Then the two of them team up against Iago, except, oh shit! Iago's got cybernetic killer implants too. He's got finger spikes, gun arms, force fields. All kinds of crazy shit.

Big ass fight. Meanwhile MOORS are blowing up everything else. Spaceships flying, lasers, rockets, exposions. Then Iago says "You can't win. Right now all the world bows to me because they're sucking on my air!"

"Yeah?" says Othello. "Well, suck on this!" Then he shoots his laser pistol and blows up an air tank (because O2 is flammable). The room starts exploding. Iago goes "NOOOOOO!!!"

They run out as the space station explodes. Sex on the escape pod. Queue credits.

Did I mention Othello is black? Not only do we get to deal with contemporary issues like terrorism and democracy via capitalism, but we also get to deal with racism and interracial love (which the housewives love, let me tell you what).

It's got everything. It has sex. It has violence. It has drama. It has relevant issues and shit. It has plot twists. It has fucking Shakespeare. The high schools will all bring their students to watch because it's educational and shit. College students will to. Rich people. Poor people. Money in the bank!

Now, where do we sign to get this picture going?

Tic-Tac-Toe: Summer Blockbuster

So, I'm not sure if you guys have heard the buzz, but apparently Hollywood's gone nuts licensing board games for movies. Monopoly, Battleship, Candyland, even some crazy shit Monsterpocalypse game I've never heard of. 'course, that monster apocalypse thing has big ass monsters blowing cities to hell, which is never a bad thing in my book. Smells like money to me. And why not? It worked for Clue. It even worked for Chess (kinda, if you consider producing anything on Broadway "a success"). That's not even a licensed product. If the directors were smart, that movie Twister would have been about young co-eds crawling and contorting all over each other instead of middle aged people chasing tornadoes in Kansas.

These movies work because they have product recognition. They have nostalgia. You see them. You remember being a kid. You remember playing, having fun. Opening that box on Christmas. Well, Hollywood has finally realized it's time to exploit that sentimental shit. And the only thing better than exploiting someone's childhood memories to make a little money is not having to pay licensing fees to do it.

Take a look at Real Steel, which you can't tell me isn't Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots with the serial numbers filed off. You mean you control a red robot and I control a blue robot and we make them kick the shit out of each other in a boxing ring trying to knock each other's heads off? Nah, I don't see the difference at all. Kudos to you Shawn Levy and Hugh Jackman. Now THAT's how you make a movie based on a trade-marked product without paying royalties or licensing fees! Skimping out on those inconvenient legal agreements with Mattel means mo' money, mo' money, mo' money when those summer box office profits roll in, especially considering Mattel is now having trouble moving forward with their actual Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots movie.

Which leads us to my brilliant idea. What about a movie based on Tic-Tac-Toe? No licensing. It's the first game you really learned. And as abstract a game as it is, you can literally do anything with it! Wanna make it about guys buying up all the property on a city block so they can make money off of kickbacks from a new subway line? Sure. How about the land grab of the 1800s? That'd be lame, but you could do it. You know, if you didn't care about making money and instead focusing on that "art" nonsense that never turns a dime. But if you want a real winner, because let's not kid ourselves, we're here to make so much damn money we're wiping our ass with Ben Franklin's face, all praise America, you need to throw in some real box office bait: explosions and violence and witty one-liners and big tits and CGI.

Space. Some planet in the middle of no where but full of super rare minerals or something. Super oil. Pentalithum crystals. Unobtainium. Gold. Doesn't matter. Magic flying juice for all it really matters to the story. And the humans from... I dunno... the Xplorer Corps or Interplanetary Xpedition find the planet and want to take advantage of its rich whatever-the-hell deposits. (See, the X is both X-treme and other stupid spellings that teenagers with money they're itching to spend like AND it's X for Tic-Tac-Toe, as in X goes first. Also X marks the spot if we want to work Space Pirates in. Pirates are still big, right? Hell, let's get Johnny Depp on the line for a cameo tie in. Space Captain Xylon Sparrow, amirite?).

So we're steady taking and taking and taking, because, as Wall Street said, greed is good. Then those damn Original Inhabitants (like O, get it?) they fight us off. To boost grosses, I say they're a race of nothing but super hot women who don't believe in clothes. Now we find out as we're reaping the rewards of our hard earned space flight, that that this place is full of fissures or something. Weak continental crust. Fault lines. Whatever. And if we can just detonate a line of three bombs, it'll throw the area outta whack, earthquakes and crumbling cities and all that craziness. They all die. We win, they lose. More money for us. And of course, they know if they can get three in a row then it'll destroy our mining operations, collapsing our tunnels and mines and stuff. Yeah, I realize that from a purely practical, logical standpoint it really shouldn't matter who gets three first or where. Everybody loses. Cities would crumble regardless. Mines would collapse no matter who wins. But no one cares. I mean, science fiction, right? Suspension of disbelief. Besides, no one's going to notice an insignificant little plot hole like that. Sure, we could have the Originals planting anti-bomb devices, fault-stabilizers, or whatever the hell pseudo-science technobabble we can come up with, but nobody pays good money to see things NOT blow up, amirite?

Here's where the idea really shifts from profitable one-trick pony to golden franchise. After an hour and a half of soldiers and topless super models blowing up buildings with tanks and lasers and bombs and robots (everyone loves robots), how does it end? Like every game of Tic-Tac-Toe. In a draw. I smell a sequel. Or a million sequels.

We have robots, explosions, violence, sex, aliens, nudity, and endless opportunity to keep milking this cow for all it's worth, all while appealing to this ingrained childhood innocence that you don't have to pay Parker Brothers five million dollars for. Brilliant right? So how about we get this thing moving. I don't know about you, but I'm really looking forward to my toilet paper made of a hundred dollar bills.

Terminator 5

Look, we all love us some big ass robots with big ass guns, and Arnold is a big dude who can carry a big gun. Terminator part 1 was great. I mean, you've got time travel, killer robots, prophecies. I mean, seriously, how cool is that? You never get prophecy in sci-fi. Then, Terminator 2 threw things on their head. What? The Killer Robot is our friend against a newer, fancier robot? Oooo... how interesting that the bad guy from the first one is the good guy in the second.

Third movie? Same damn thing. Same old robot, brand new killer bots. The Sarah Conner Chronicles? Again, same thing. Reprogrammed robot helps kill bad robots. Terminator Salvation shakes things up, but just a little. One robot who doesn't know he's a robot helping fight the rest. We need to break from the formula.

So what if, for the next terminator movie... ALL of the robots versus aliens versus, wait for it, dinosaurs.

We're stuck with the same old tired and boring humans versus robots thing. This war's gone on long enough, don't you think? I mean, how many last stands does John Conner get before the robots realize bullshit bullshit bullshit, perseverance of the human spirit, bullshit bullshit bullshit, creativity, bullshit bullshit bullshit, capacity for love, blah blah blah.

We need a new enemy to step in and make things interesting. There's no one else on the planet. Humans could make weird genetically mutated humans who go nuts, but they'd have to use computers and let's be reasonable here, skynet would hack it. The robots have been churning out alternative robots for forever, so that's old hat. The only place to get new enemies is from the stars. So aliens come. Their electro-magnetic synthetic bio-whatever the hell scanners detect life and lots of tech, so they come to investigate, but here's the thing. All of these terminators sent back in time? That causes some serious distortion to the space time continuum and their temporal flux anomaly detectors say, "Hey, FYI, these guys have time travel," which of course the aliens have wanted for forever. Don't ask me how they can detect time travel but don't have time travel themselves. That's for the writers to figure out. That's their job, amirite?

So here's John Conner and he wants to get rid of these robots and here come the aliens. John makes a deal with the little green men or gray men or whatever color they end up being, and they agree to help him, only he doesn't know they're just in it for the tech and they plan on enslaving the world with it. So we get a little political intrigue. This isn't your daddy's action movie. It's got some real depth, you know? Layers.

As he's working with the aliens, he falls in love with one who's just smoking hot sexy. It'll be like Avatar only instead of being blue tree-hugging hippies they'll be sexy techno types who wear spandex and leather and neon lights like something out of Tron. And so we get a love story in there too and some really hot sex scenes. Make sure to get a little full frontal or at least topless, unlike that disappointing PG-13 Avatar sex scene nonsense.

She finds out what the aliens' real plans are and because she loves him, humans are great, indomitable human spirit, noble creatures bullshit that all these sci-fi movies have, she tells him and betrays her people. So they go to the terminators and they join up with them to get rid of the aliens, and then because Alien chick is from another planet, she says "let me show you how we love where I'm from," and there's a sexy lesbian scene with Summer Glau or the terminatrix or some other robo-hottie (What were they called in Austin Powers? Fembots?). Any way, lesbian sex. Three way. Get someone like Jessica Alba or Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman. Someone who all the fanboys wanna see naked. We're talking huge opening weekend grosses.

Anyway, terminators plus humans versus aliens. But we're too late. Aliens have the time travel tech, and guess what? Clothes, tools? Inorganic things don't time travel so well, so the aliens go back in time and get something all organic and all-powerful. Fuckin' dinosaurs. What? Only the humans get the idea that they can do it too. Imagine that final fight scene. Aliens blasting shit with lasers while a T-rex runs through and destroys everything in his path and then, oh shit, here comes every action star you've ever seen as robotic assassins armed with the biggest guns you've ever seen riding on the backs of fuckin' dinosaurs. Tell me you wouldn't pay good money to see that thing.

Now, Christian Bale is playing John Conner and he's been showing his chops, so we'll probably have to give him some Oscar Bait in there too. Maybe his wife dies at the beginning and his kids are brutally murdered by terminators, which is why he shacks up with the aliens (get over his wife). Plus, it shows real depth of character that he's siding with the robots who killed his kid after some big long "Should I? Shouldn't I?" scene.

You've got some political intrigue, some heart, some sex and violence, action, monsters, time travel, aliens. It'd be "Independence Day" meets "Jurassic Park" versus "G.I. Joe" meets "Terminator." Can you imagine the box office grosses? The merchandising? We're talking toys, action figures, breakfast cereals, t-shirts, video games, spin-off porn. What do you say? Let's greenlight this thing so we can start rolling in the millions.

Brain Clown Posse

So I was on the internet checking out these videos, you know, looking to see what I can spin into a tv/movie/merchandising deal and I see this video about clowns and miracles and stuff. You know. Rainbows are magic. How do magnets work? Science stuff. Why does my kid look like me?

Why don't these guys have a kids show yet? What do they call themselves? The Insane Clown Posse? Here's what I'm thinking. Half hour show. Maybe animated. Got these two clowns who live in Clown Town and they go on these educational adventures. How do magnets work? How do rainbows form? Where does electricity come from? Crazy shit like that. So they go on these adventures and they sing their little science rap songs. We give 'em a clown dog or cat or monkey or something. They have a clown car, all of which of course will be made into action figures and dolls and shit. We call the show "The Brain Clown Posse" or "The Edutain Clown Posse." I don't know. Figure it out later.

And these guys have fans, right? I think they call themselves Jugglers? Juggalos? Something about juggling. So their fans can juggle on the show and teach kids how to juggle. Bam! We can sell licensed juggling kits too. We've got this built-in fanbase to watch the show, they're old enough to have kids, so their kids are watching the show, because hey, who doesn't love an educational clown, amirite? Meanwhile, they're buying the DVDs, the action figures, the pajamas, the breakfast cereal. They're coming to see the ice show. It'll be the next big Barney or Scooby-Doo or that Dora chick. We'll make billions, amirite?

What do we say? We got a deal?

A Scanner Darkly 2

Alright, baby. Listen up. I've been thinking about this thing, right? It's been a while since Keanu Reeves has done something. Time to get him back in the saddle. But he thinks he's serious now since he did that Scanner Darkly thing. I don't know. I guess because it has some title I can't understand. Do you know what it means? I sure don't. So I'm thinking maybe we lure him back in. Sequel, amirite?

So here's what we got. We got Keanu, right? And he's at that place, what's it called? New Path. And he's recovering from Substance D addiction, wah wah, weepy weepy, Keanu can get his dramatic performance in. Maybe an Oscar nod. The Academy likes drug addiction, right? Whatever. We'll get the writers to sort it out later. Anyway.

So he's at New Path and he discovers, holy crap, this assholes are the guys growing that blue flower thing that Substance D is made from. And he needs to break out, but the thing is, see, these New Path guys don't play around. I mean, they are a drug cartel, right? So they've got these big guys with these machine guns and these rocket launchers and stuff. Lasers. It's set in the future, right? Sure, so they can have laser guns. It'll be a kinda sci-fi drama action movie kinda thing.

But see, the thing is, New Path? They aren't done yet. No. Substance D was just a dry run. A test for their marketing system, their ability to create a drug and get it going on the streets. They were just making sure they had the infrastructure to launch, get this, Substance Z. That's right. You know where I'm going with this. It's like Substance D only it turns the addicts into flesh-eating zombies. Zombies are so in right now. And so Keanu has to not only kill all the New Path guys, but he also has to save the whole world from just millions and millions of zombies. And the president is all on the phone like, "We need Arctor! Get him out of that facility now! He's the only one who knows how to handle this shitstorm!" Because, hey, it's funny to see the president swear.

So it's Arctor and a whole team of commandos. And they're just cutting f'n swaths through these zombie hordes right? Maybe one of 'em could be the comic relief like Howling Mad Murdock from The A-Team. And they've got guns and tanks and the New Path guy is doing angry villain stuff like shaking his robotic fist at everything. And I don't know about you, but when I first heard they were making A Scanner Darkly, I thought it was a cross between Scanners and Pitch Dark. It wasn't. Lame. But we can still connect to that key Scanners demographic. So like, what if Substance D gave Arctor crazy psychic powers too? So he's just staring at people and their heads explode. Bad guys. Guards. Zombies. You name it. He can make anything explode with his mind. And we get clever, like with Aliens, you know? Instead of calling it A Scanner Darkly 2, we call it The Scanners Darkly. Right? I mean, it's gonna be a brilliant sci-fi horror action comedy drama paranormal thing.

Only here's what I'm thinking. Last movie didn't gross so much. Lost money even. But this is where it gets good, right? That movie had a few names in it. Keanu. Robert Downy Jr. Woody. Winona. What it really needs, though, is more names. More famous people means more money, right? So we take those scramble suits that they wore. You know that holographic whatever stuff that made them look like everybody? What if, wait for it, it only made them look like celebrities? Right? We get all the celebrities. Pay 'em cameo rates, right? Screw 'em. They're working only one day. So when Keanu's in the suit, he looks like all these famous guys. Stallone. Willis. Schwartzeneger. Rourke. Vin Diesel. Statham. It'd be like that Imaginarium of Doctor Whathisface thing only times ten and they're all blowing stuff up and killing guys.

Also, we get rid of Winona. Not a fan of her. Talented, yeah, sure, but she's not sexy. She's not hot right now. We replace her with, I'm thinking Jessica Alba or that one girl from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. You know the one. The blonde one. Or hell, doesn't matter. Either of them will do. But see, remember because she was an agent too, she also gets a scramble suit, so she can look like every hot actress out there. Screw it, every hot famous chick. Models. Singers. Porn stars. You name it. They don't need to act. I mean, no one is coming to see this for the acting, amirite? Sorry, Keanu.

Now here's the best part. Can you imagine that sex scene? Every hot person you've ever seen in a movie just going at it with every other hot famous person you've ever seen. Just a big old collage of sexy people having sex for five straight minutes. I'd pay fifteen bucks to see that.

So you know, it's steamy and sexy and it's sci-fi with action and some real drama in there and, you know, with a heart because Arctor and Donna (those are their names, right?), they really do love each other, so there's some sadness, some love there for the date movie crowd.

The Scanners Darkly. Staring every actor who's hot right now. Sci-fi action horror drama comedy sexy love story with a heart. It'll make millions. Amirite?