Snapchat doesn't want to make TV shows! Someone get Quentin away from the camera! Goosebumps inspire generational terror! And the bug too outre for “The X Files.” It's all in today's Bullet Points, your daily Hollywood briefing.
• PANDEMONIUM: Who would”ve thunk. A Peter Pan movie that doesn”t make money? How could that happen? Universal brand recognition! Several quadrants! A grown up director making a kid”s movie..but that”s also a grown up movie. THR reports that with the fall of Pan, thus crumble Warner Bros” dreams of building a new “Harry Potter” franchise. Funny how these dreams to produce a new Harry Potter franchise never seem to work, and neither do the dreams to produce a new Twilight franchise, a new Hunger Games franchise, or a new Red Lobster franchise for that matter.
If only audiences would pick a demographic profile and stick to it, so the executives could just plug in an appropriate brand and we could all go home. Well, I”m old enough to remember a time when every studio was trying to come up with a new Star Wars franchise, and although many careers will lost, history will always honor the proud entertainers who gave us this:
• DO GOOSEBUMPS MAKE SKIN CRAWL? Perhaps the most frightening trend in all the internet has been unleashed by the new family film. Not that Gen Y and Z need any special excuse to cling bitterly to their memories of summer camp and mommy and daddy bringing them hot cocoa in bed, but under the terrifying headline “Goosebumps Looks To Tap Into 90″s Nostalgia” Variety reports: “People are using #90skid on both social media pages to emphasize their emotional connection.” Is it too extreme to suggest that anyone who uses the hashtag 90″s Kid, should have it forceably tattoed on their forehead?
TAPS FOR CHANNEL SNAP: As described by Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations, the first thing that happens in the post-industrial age when an industry reaches maturity is it decides to get into the entertainment business. For the pillars of American business from oil and automobiles, to credit cards and now tech, shooting their own sitcoms and getting to throw fancy premieres with moviestars has long been the official sign that the industry has come of age. The second thing that happens in the post-industrial age when an industry reaches maturity is that it runs screaming from the entertainment business. The death today of Channel Snap shows just how far the world has come, now that a little teenage sexting act can spot after just a few months exposure the madness of being in the content creation business in this day and age.
• WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT QUENTIN: Variety reported that Quentin Tarantino has agreed to extend the psychodrama of the making of “Hateful Eight” well into the films release. He told the journal that he”ll cut cut two different versions of the film. “The roadshow version has an overture and an intermission, and it will be three hours, two minutes,” Tarantino told Variety. “The multiplex version is about six minutes shorter, not counting the intermission time, which is about 12 minutes.”
Why stop there, we wonder? Why not cut 37 different versions? Why not have a version to match every mood in the director”s kaledoscopic vision? Why not an Orange Hateful Eight, and a 19 second Hateful Eight and a real time Hateful Eight that lasts 14 years, and shows the writing of every draft and the every take in the production? Why should Hateful Eight in fact ever end, given that there remain millions of people who still aren”t involved in the controversies around it”s filming? Why shouldn”t the production just keep going until all of us become part of Hateful Eight and Hateful Eight becomes more real than non-Hateful Eight?
• FAR-GOING FOR THE GOLD: Fargo”s 2nd Season debuted last night and was immediately called the best show ever made in the history of show”s by all American recappers. The celebration took an ugly turn however when while walking on the streets of the West Village, Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner was attacked by a mob of disgruntled TV recappers from the New York Magazine, New Yorker and New York Times staffs, who stood the former titan on his head and shook him until their recaps fell out his his pockets, which they then burned, shouting, “You”re no Noah Hawey!” (Full disclosure: I thought Episode 1 was terrific. Kiki 4ever. And here”s Alan”s take )
BUGGY DUCHOVNY: The most amazing tidbit from this Hollywood Reporter retrospective nostalgia, 20th Anniversary Celebration, Walk Up to Reboot interview with the writer of an episode of X Files. When asked if the episode had any trouble with network censors revealed, “Oh boy. The censor notes on this one, the one I always remember is we couldn't use the word maggots. There's this dream sequence where he's describing his body decaying — and that was researched — his speech was very specific about what would happen to a dead body on a field, how it would decay. And [he said], “the maggots” blah, blah, blah. They wouldn't allow the word maggots. And I had to change it to insects.”
Personally we prefer “larvae.”
• TYCOON-O'RAMA! Hollywood loves them! Egos! Inventions! Fatal flaws! Tycoons have got it all. Here's the Hitfix Academy's 2 Minute History of Tycoons on film:
• HAPPY 26TH BIRTHDAY Look Who's Talking!! And other great events from this day in history.
• ELseWHEREIA: One actress had very thoughtful and interesting things to say about the state of the world, pay equity, etc. and one actress did not. The US Government announced that next year's Presidential election will be decided by SNL sketch.
• APOCALYPSE PERK: The Walking Dead credits set to the Friends theme says everything that needs to be said about the 90″s and the 10″s
• And finally, Fandemonium breaks down the Bond breakdown in the video below: