Clique Picks “Hick” Flick

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:30:00 GMT

Normally I wouldn’t consider this the most newsworthy item in the world, but for some reason I just couldn’t resist that headline. Anyway, according to the Hollywood Reporter, “Producers Steven Siebert and Christian Taylor have optioned the best-selling novel Hick by first-time author Andrea Portes.” It’s a coming-of-age story that “was recently named among the best adult books for high school students by the School Library Journal.” The most curious part of this story is the note that the producers “hope to mold the project with a lead character in the vein of Addie Loggins of Paper Moon and Iris Steensma in Taxi Driver. " Whoa, whoa, time out here. That’s a mold? Addie Loggins, as we recall, was a scrappy little Depression-era con gal. Iris Steensma was a Times Square hooker who blew Harvey Keitel. Might want to narrow down that casting call, folks.

While we’re here, let’s take a look at some other recent script sales of note:

-- Columbia has picked up Battle: Los Angeles, “a huge event movie that can be done at a modest scale,” according to producer Neal Moritz. It focuses on one Marine platoon in the midst of an alien invasion.

-- Fanboys screenwriter and personal friend of the Screengrab Ernie Cline, who has certainly suffered enough, got a bit of good news. He’s sold his script Thundercade to Lake Shore Entertainment. It’s another idea right in Cline’s pop culture wheelhouse, concerning “a video game junkie facing a midlife crisis who learns that a young punk had broken a record he set as a teen. He and two lifelong friends embark on a quest to reclaim his place in video game history and win the world's ultimate gaming championship, Thundercade.” Lest you suspect Cline of ripping of The King of Kong, be advised that Thundercade actually predates the documentary (and with any luck will torpedo the ill-advised fictional remake).

-- And finally one that really hits us where we live. MGM picked up Bobism, “in which a shy college kid learns that his blog will be the basis for a utopian society in 1,000 years. He also finds out that aliens from the future want to kill him and prevent that utopia from happening.” You laugh, but this actually happened to us.

Fanboys on the March

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:00:00 GMT

The calendar says it’s January 18th, which means another Fanboys release date has arrived without the movie itself actually showing up in theaters. The comedy about a group of Star Wars geeks sneaking their terminally ill friend into Skywalker Ranch for an early screening of The Phantom Menace was originally slated to hit screens last summer, but has been pushed back several times amid rumors and reshoots. The latest unconfirmed reports have the project being absorbed by the Amalgamated Apatow Conglomerate for an infusion of market-tested laughs. (According to this scuttlebutt, two versions of the film will be screened for test audiences — one with the terminally ill cancer patient and one without. In the latter, the kids presumably break into the Lucas compound just for shits and grins.)

What you may not know is that Fanboys has been in the works for longer than it took Lucas and company to crank out all three of the Star Wars prequels. In this new interview with our good friends at Shuffleboil, screenwriter/slam poet/geek pride activist Ernie Cline recounts the origins of the story back in 1998. "My mother had died of cancer the year before," Cline says, "so I was somewhat fixated on human mortality at the time. One day the question occurred to me — what would I do if I knew I wasn’t going to live to see 'Episode One?' The answer seemed obvious. I’d have to drive out to California and break into Skywalker Ranch to try and find the work print. I knew right away that it was a great idea for a movie. So I sat down and wrote it, with the intention of trying to make it myself as a low budget Indie film."

Fanboys is now tentatively scheduled for release in March or April of this year. You can check out the Fanboys timeline for yourself through this press archive at Cline’s website, which also features a sampling of his geektastic spoken word material.

The Screengrab : ernie cline

Clique Picks “Hick” Flick

Fanboys on the March