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Blogocentric Formulations
#932647 added April 12, 2018 at 5:13pm
Restrictions: None
Goonies Never Say Die!

"Blog Harbor from The Talent PondOpen in new Window. PROMPT (DAY 12): Congratulations, you're now the head of a major motion picture studio! You have the final say over what films get made and how much money is spent on them! With your newfound authority, you can remake or reboot any film from the past. Which will you choose and why? And, more importantly, how big a movie would you make? Would you want to do a big budget remake of a cult classic? A Star Wars movie with a small indie feel? A complete reboot of the Transformers franchise? A future-set sci-fi adaptation of Titanic? This is your chance to overhaul a movie of your choice from the past... tell us a little about what that project is and how you see the new version turning out!


When thinking about today's blog entry, I briefly considered flat-out remaking a movie I loved as a child (wouldn't it be awesome to see a live-action update to the animated classic Transfomers: The Movie with all that our visual effects can accomplish today? It's still the best Transformers movie, IMHO), and then entertained the idea of completely rebooting a franchise that's gone a little off the rails but has a lot of potential (The Transporter franchise, for example). But ultimately I decided to go with a beloved childhood movie that I think could be really successful without necessarily having a full on reboot or just trying to remake the original. I'd choose:




What kid wouldn't want to go on a treasure hunt? And you could totally do this as a sequel to the original. Bring back one of the kids (Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Corey Feldman, etc.) who's now in the role of a parent, and their kids get to set off on a new adventure of their own. You could tie the new adventure into the same One-Eyed Willy plotline from the original movie, or you could come up with a completely different legend behind a new buried treasure. Either way, it would be a blast (and I think really successful) to introduce an entirely new generation to the fun of a family movie that centers on a bunch of kids trying to uncover the secrets to a buried treasure. Then again, maybe I just love these kinds of movies in general, because I would totally consider a National Treasure or Romancing the Stone reboot too. *Bigsmile*

I'd probably give the movie a modest budget and modest release plan. Over the years of working in this business, I've learned that having a huge amount of money to spend doesn't always guarantee success. Sometimes the truly memorable moments come when you have to find creative ways to work around budgeting or logistical problems. A huge studio blockbuster titles like the Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Jurassic World fare have budgets in excess of $200 million, which I don't think you'd need for this. A modest budget mainstream film (The Shape of Water, Hidden Figures, the Tyler Perry movies, etc.) might have a budget of around $20-$25 million. And a standard studio film (including Goonies if you adjust its 1984 production budget for inflation) would be around $50 million (Ted, The Nice Guys, 22 Jump Street, Central Intelligence, Erin Brokovich, The Emoji Movie, Moneyball, Peter Rabbit, etc.). I think someone could make a perfectly serviceable Goonies sequel for around $50 million, without needing to go all crazy with the costly visual effects or special effects. And on a modest budget, there's a much higher likelihood of becoming solidly profitable than spending a huge amount of money and hoping it's a home run.


On a completely separate note, while I was researching this blog post today, I started looking through a list of cult movies just to see if anything would inspire me... and whoa boy did I find a lot of really, um, unusual movies. I'd heard of a couple of them before (Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Sharknado), but most of these are new to me and I just had to share them based on their synopses alone. All synopses are borrowed from Wikipedia... most of them are just quick blurbs but there are two that are much more detailed because you almost need the longer description in those cases to fully appreciate how bizarre and/or gross those films are:

Frankenhooker
Gayni**ers From Outer Space
I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle
Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter
Killer Klowns from Outer Space
Nude on the Moon
Nekromantik (GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING!)
Sharknado
ThanksKilling

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