7 Really Specific Bad Movie Ideas Hollywood Keeps Repeating

Leading the vanguard of generic swordplay is Disney, which is planning two separate Arthur-related franchises. One is a live-action remake of their animated classic The Sword In The Stone, in which Kid Arthur is shown the ropes by the old and wise wizard Merlin. The script will be written by Game Of Thrones veteran Bryan Cogman, so all bets are off on whether the 10-year-old future king will make it to the credits with his throat un-slit.

Intent on making Tiny Toons out of all the Arthurian legends, Merlin will also get his own coming-of-age story. Disney is going all-out with this one too, adopting The Merlin Saga novels with screenwriter Philippa Boyens, who worked on both The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit. If this sounds like Disney is trying to make a new Harry Potter franchise, that's because they are. The studio has already slotted a whole series of films featuring young Merlin, who conveniently comes prepackaged with his own magic wand, owl, and fair-haired sidekick -- if young Arthur doesn't get Bolton-ed in the face before then.

Live-action or not, these Disney versions will likely stick reasonably close to the fairy tale goodness of yore. Not so for Guy Ritchie's proposed retelling of Arthur's origins, which promises to be so gritty that audiences will have something in their eyes for days after.

Deeming stories wherein a bunch of armored maniacs roam the countryside and kill Celts too "bland and nice," Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword aims to turn the icon of virtue and chivalry into a badass. Orphaned at a young age and now raised by three prostitutes in 5th-Century London, Arthur (or Arfur) will thieve his way through life. Eventually, he'll grow up to become Sons Of Anarchy's Charlie Hunnam, claim his birthright, and fight some giant snakes and elephants. Not sure how this has anything to do with King Arthur? Tough break. That question doesn't stop a man who has already made millions out of turning Sherlock Holmes into a guy so smart he can beat the shit out of people.

But what could possibly be more extreme (and ridiculous) than Ritchie's cockney sparrow angle? Maybe a graffiti artist battling crime and ancient magic? That is indeed the plot of Fox's new Arthurian series Camelot. The show will take place in modern-era New York, where Art will battle newly awakened dark magic and regular old crime with his cop ex-girlfriend Gwen (and doesn't that sound ever so familiar).

Actually, there's a good chance we won't get sick of King Arthur after all, seeing as how we're never going to recognize the poor bastard.

Firstly, author Robert Louis Stevenson's walking two-for-one deal will be gracing the set of ABC's Once Upon A Time, the show about Disney characters who live in the same little Maine town and kill each other. Now in its fifth season and running out of princesses to strangle, the show has started dumpster-diving in the Western literary canon, pulling out every royalty-free character they can get their hands on. For Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, this has meant splitting up to join the heroes and villains, respectively. So if you want to see of the most psychologically complex fictional heroes of the 19th Century camp it up like they're in a pantomime, ABC is the place to go.

Giving a touch of class to literary grave robbery is Lionsgate, which is developing a movie adaptation of the BBC miniseries Jekyll, about a descendant of the first doctor who discovers that having a genetic disposition to transform into a nocturnal asshole is his family's version of Huntington's Disease. Starring in the movie will be Captain America's Chris Evans, for whom playing such a dual character must be right in his wheelhouse. After all, he did spend years switching back and forth between a morally upstanding hero and the actor who was sick and tired of playing a morally upstanding hero.

Bringing it back to the source, Russell Crowe will be playing the original Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in Universal's upcoming The Mummy reboot starring Tom Cruise. Dr. J. and Mr. H. will only appear as a cameo in this first of the series, but it's almost certain that Crowe will star in his own feature, finally giving him a platform for the rage issues he's been method acting his entire life. The Mummy will be the first movie in the new Universal Monsters Cinematic Universe, which will be the studio's attempt at their own hero franchise like the Marvel and DC Universes -- so expect all these decrepit ghouls to eventually team up like they're the Halloween-themed Avengers.

Driving a bunch of strangers around for a moderate amount of cash is certainly a concept that has generated quality comedy in the past, like Tony Shalhoub in Quick Change, or Andy Kaufman in Taxi, or Bobby DeNiro's hilarious turn as a lovable grump in Taxi Driver. But times are a-changing, and now studios are looking to update the yellow cab comedy for the Uber generation -- sans the sexual assaults, we're assuming.

Both Universal Studios and 20th Century Fox are currently circling around similar Uber screenplays like empty cabs circling bars at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night. Fox has bought a finished script about an Uber driver named Stu, in the creatively titled Stuber, who gets trapped chauffeuring a cop working the most dangerous case of his career. Meanwhile, Universal has laid down seven figures for a pitch about an Uber driver being held hostage by an escaped convict. The movie does come with Will Ferrell attached as the driver, though, which might explain why they haven't bothered writing a script yet.

Two Uber movies being developed at the same time must seem like a crazy coincidence, right? But in truth, this weird rabbit hole goes a lot deeper than that. According to The Hollywood Reporter, both studios snatched up their respective movies within 24 hours of each other, unaware that they'd effectively halved each other's market. But here's the real twist to this caper: Both projects are repped by the same company, United Talent Agency. We like to imagine that the Uber movie started out as a single screenplay accidentally promised to both studios, with an out-of-their-depth agent rushing back and forth between two conference rooms, trying to keep both studios on the hook while some intern on a beat-up MacBook frantically presses Ctrl+H to replace GRIZZLED COP with DERANGED CONVICT.

First on the docket is the Tupac-related film Labyrinth (no, not that one), which stars Johnny Depp as Detective Russell Poole, the man who investigated the murders of Tupac and his East Coast rival, Notorious B.I.G. Poole was the first to claim there was a connection between corrupt "gangsta cops," Death Row Records, and the LA street gang the Bloods. This one will play out more like a conspiracy thriller than a movie about rappers, but do expect a scene in which Depp stoically listens to some Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. as he's connecting two thumbtacks with a bit of string.

Next up is 7Dayz (sadly, not a hip-hop mashup of The Ring), which will take an emotional look at Tupac's last seven days on Earth -- which he spent in a medically induced coma. The film is in fact a sneaky way for director Gobi Rahimi, a former friend and collaborator of Shakur's, to share his experience at Tupac's bedside. The project is having a lot of problems raising money, however, managing to only hit 4 percent of its target on Indiegogo, and by October 2016 barely limping over the halfway mark of the $300,000 Rahimi needs to start production. It's almost as if nobody's that interested in spending two hours of their lives watching a famous rapper be unconscious.

Honoring Tupac's memory with dignity is turning out to be a harder task than killing someone who was practically unkillable. Another former music video director of Shakur's, John Singleton (who also directed Boyz N The Hood), who was working on a Tupac biopic for years, left the project after becoming enraged by the producer's mistreatment of Tupac's legacy. Singleton accused the producers of only wanting to focus on Tupac's hip-hop career, instead of his struggles as a black man. In response, they replaced Tupac's former collaborator with Homeland and House Of Cards director Carl Franklin, a man who clearly has a lot of experience handling overbearing white people. He later left as well, and All Eyez On Me was brought to fruition by Benny Boom.

Since his departure, Singleton has announced that he will start up his very own Tupac biopic, promising that whatever All Eyez comes up with won't matter, because his version will be "better" and done with true love. Hell, by the time that these battling rapper movies are over, audiences will have seen Tupac get shot more often than Bruce Wayne's parents.

Now that we're all grown-ups who have access to the internet, we're all pretty much over the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle, right? Apparently not, according to the Hollywood producers who are about to flood us with Bermuda Triangle movies no one asked for.

Skydance Studios, a wing of Paramount, recently bought a script originally written by the scribes of the terrible 2009 Friday The 13th remake. Quickly deciding that script needed some sprucing up, Skydance brought in another writing duo, Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard, to take a crack at it. In case the names don't immediately click, those are the guys responsible for Nicolas Cage's Sorcerer's Apprentice. Hiring the people who wrote one of the worst Nic Cage movies to punch up the script by the people who wrote one of the worst Jason movies seems like quite the lateral move. That's like getting your car rewashed by a hobo with a slightly cleaner crumbled newspaper.

Also committing to the silent majority's demand for bad aquatic folklore is Universal, which seems to be following the exact same game plan as Paramount. They've also commissioned a rewrite of a Bermuda Triangle script they bought off the team responsible for Lethal Weapon 4 and Herbie: Fully Loaded. Their go-to writers were the husband-and-wife team that churned out Ouija, the horror movie based on a Hasbro game for ages eight and up. Can you smell the Oscar? That's not what that smell is.

Rounding off the triumvirate of bad killer water movies is Warner Bros, which has had a Bermuda Triangle project aimlessly floating around for the past three years, and that's about all anybody knows about that. It exists. Or it will. They're working on it. They're going to. Soon. Geez, what are you, Warner Brothers' mom?

But the real winner of the Bermuda Triangle flick wars, and the only one we really know anything about, isn't even supposed to be a Bermuda Triangle flick. It's the next Pirates Of The Caribbean installment, subtitled Dead Men Tell No Tales. The film is said to center around witches and a ghost on a mission of revenge. There's also a new leading lady to contend with Captain Jack Sparrow. Oh yeah, and there's some spooky water. Whatever. All POTC movies are technically set in the Bermuda Triangle, but you don't see them making such a big deal about it.

We're not sure what it is that directing mutant movies does to you, but it seems it can make you hot under the collar for steampunk science fiction. That must be the reason not one but two X-Men directors are separately developing adaptations of Jules Verne's famed novel 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. And with both projects trying to come out as quickly as possible, like most Hollywood reboots, it'll be a race to the bottom.

First to step into the weirdly specific ring of X-Men directors wanting to adapt Jules Verne novels is James Mangold, responsible for The Wolverine and the upcoming Logan. Mangold has signed on to do Disney's attempt to remake their 1954 adaptation of the same novel. This time, however, the movie will revolve around the origin story of Captain Nemo (which is also the title of the movie). So get ready to watch two hours of a young captain first going 1,000 leagues, then 2,000, all the way to 19,999 leagues under the sea.

No origin story nonsense will take place in Bryan Singer's (who has directed most of the X-Men movies) version. In early 2016, he made a deal with Fox to make 20,000 Leagues his next big project. Singer even proclaimed in an interview: "Ever since I was a boy and first discovered the 1870 Jules Verne novel, I have dreamt of retelling this classic story." That makes it seem like Singer will remain faithful to the original. However, in the same breath, the director also proclaimed that the movie was going to add some new and quirky characters and "plot twists" to the story. So in other words, this will still be first and foremost a Bryan Singer movie. We wonder what physical defect Captain Nemo will turn out to have been faking all along.

Meanwhile, Lionsgate has bought the rights for a movie titled Robin Hood: Origins, sharing its screenwriter with Ritchie's new gangster King Arthur reboot. And to complete Robin's gritty makeover, the movie has been described as "an origins story with a Batman Begins tone." Sorry, that sentence made us throw up in our mouths a little. For maximum maturity, the movie will also feature professional cool dude Jamie Foxx as Little John and Fifty Shades Of Grey's Jamie Dornan as Will Scarlet. Make no mistake, this isn't your dad's Robin Hood -- your dad being Kevin Costner in this scenario.

But Hollywood's uncanny ability to produce utterly insane updates of familiar stories doesn't stop there. Sony has picked up a Robin Hood script as well, titled Hood, which has been described as Fast & Furious meets Mission Impossible -- which must be tricky to pull off in a world where horses are the quickest transportation and bushes are the most advanced stealth technology.

But here's the real kicker: Sony is planning to turn Robin, Little John, Friar Tuck, and Will Scarlet into "an Avengers-style team of heroes from the Middle Ages." The plan is to have all the Merry Men spin off into their own movies, sharing screen time with the other Sherwood Forest staples like ... the trees? How the fuck can you make a movie-spanning universe if the universe is the size of a small state park?

Warner Brothers, the studio that distributed most of the 20th-Century Robin Hood movies, also has a horse in this medieval race. They've attached writer Will Beall of Gangster Squad infamy, and The Lego Movie producers Dan Lin and John Zaozirny, to their new Robin Hood project. It's been over a year since anything was heard about WB's venture, though, but based on the competition, we can surmise the film will either put Robin in Prohibition times, duking it out with corrupt officials and gangsters alike, or he'll be made out of Legos and voiced by Chris Pratt.

Heck, with all this appropriation, it's only a matter of time before a studio does something even more ridiculous, like put Robin Hood in space, looting spaceships, fighting against an evil galactic federation, all the while cracking wise with his lovable band of misfits ... actually, that doesn't sound all that bad.

Carolyn never repeats a tweet.

Also check out Why The Blockbuster Movie Bubble Will Burst In 2018 and 6 Harsh Truths The Movie Business Needs To Face.

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