The TV Addict 

I love when every now and then Hollywood makes two similar themed films at the same time.

It doesn’t happen often, but every now and then you have a case where Hollywood studios or filmmakers not only begin developing similar projects, but somehow manage to not only go into production with those films at the same time, but also release them often in the same year. In 1993/94 we got WYATT EARP and TOMBSTONE. In 1997 we had DANTE’S PEAK and VOLCANO. In 1998 we got DEEP IMPACT and ARMAGEDDON, and in 2005 we got THE CAVE and THE DESCENT.

There are of course also other cases where similar projects in development were competing and one or both lost and never were made. A few examples … A while back Martin Scorsese, Baz Luhrmann, and Oliver Stone were all developing Alexander the Great films. Then there was Christopher Nolan’s Howard Hughes (to be played by Jim Carrey, apparently) project which lost to Scorsese’s. There are inevitably more, so please feel free to post ones I missed below.

I bring this all up because now it looks like in a few years we’ll be getting two Sherlock Holmes movies. One bound to be a goofy comedy starring Sacha Baron Cohen (Sherlock Holmes) and Will Ferrell (Watson), and the other a more serious film (maybe?) with Robert Downey Jr. playing the famous detective, and Guy Ritchie (of all people) stepping behind the camera. We’ll also be getting two Greek mythology films in the form of a CLASH OF THE TITANS remake and Relativity Media’s WAR OF GODS.

So why do I love when this happens? On some level it’s a fun and easy way to mock Hollywood for its increasing lack of originality. I suppose mostly though it just inspires silly debate as to which film will be better, which film turns out to be better. (For my money TOMBSTONE, DANTE’s PEAK, DEEP IMPACT, and THE DESCENT were the winners of their respective competitions). Then you have the awkward questions the filmmakers have to face on press junkets about whether they knew about the competing project, and you get to see them squirm in an amusing and defensive fashion. Also, as a creative individual, it’s always interesting to see how two completely different sets of filmmakers approach a shared fundamental concept. Mostly it’s the squirming though.