Blowing off steam!! That was MY idea...

icba pictures

icba pictures

Anyone else here have a great idea while laying in bed, get up and type it in an e-mail top yourself, then at work the next day do some research to make sure no one else has used it before... Only to find out it's being used.. by another film maker.. shooting in the summer.. and it's way too close to your idea!!!
I know about the Nickclapper's Flight of the Flamingo, at least I didn't even write the script yet. Crap, it was an awesome movie that was playing out in my head... Lots of great suspense filled scenes. Turns out the other guys are doing one based on real events. Mine was total fiction, and really not the same, but involved a hotel... and hostages... and loot... Well maybe I'll enjoy theirs and still write it out anyway, who knows. Waited all day at work to get some free time to play with the idea and then shot down. How long will people go before they see a similar movie as new or different. 2 years, 4 years.. 5 or 6 years. Would probably take me that long to get it written and organized anyway, haha.
:(

"6 Bullets From Now" is the name of the one being shot this summer.
 
I haven't (yet) had that with a feature, but I have had it with mates. About halfway through the shooting of my current video I decided to tell one of the guys I sometimes work with what I was working on and to my surprise he said was working on the exact same type of video at the moment too! I'm still working on it, coz mine will be better ;)
 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2676318/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=36408

Bummer.


Anyways...
Go ahead and write your own.
Do it your way.
F#ckem.

If The Asylum can get away with doing it on purpose surely you can do it by coincidence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asylum
http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-asylum-sued-over-age-of-the-hobbits-which-now,89776/
http://www.filmjunk.com/2012/05/02/...iversal-not-happy-about-battleship-knock-off/

D@mnation! This looks like they spent some real money on it!
(But trailers can be deceiving.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tksulgyBdpM

LOL! The retitled AOFH film: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2456594/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
 
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I can't believe how this works.

How can you, from an awesome idea you have in your head, find a movie that is not even shot yet. Fuck, I can't even find a movie which is out already and I knew its plot.
 
How about this:

I pitched a script idea to my manager. He liked it so I spent the next year and a half writing the screenplay. We weren't crazy about the title, so I came up with a better one. On a whim, I did a google search and found another script with the same title, similar plot and several similar elements, that sold in 2010 and is currently in development.

My manager was embarrassed, as part of his job is to research such things beforehand, but somehow this one slipped past his radar. He decided to go ahead and send mine out anyway - after a title change, of course - but only to a couple of production companies at a time, rather than the usual shotgun approach.

So far, no one has called us on it, but it is aggravating. :mad:
 
Your ideas may be the same, but how you execute the film will be different..I knew a guy who sold a script by "stealing" ideas from the the Screenplay blacklist..I don't think they post the full script, so what he did was make that movie his even though the idea was being used by another person..
 
icba pictures said:
Mine was total fiction, and really not the same, but involved a hotel... and hostages... and loot...
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So, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, you mean something like Die Hard? Or any other number of movies with a hotel, and action scenes, and hostages, and loot?

Unless you were using the same source material (the "based on a true story" heist), I'd bet whatever you wrote would be significantly different enough from "6 bullets" that it isn't going to matter anyway.

Write it anyway, imo. :)
 
Yeah, maybe I watched too many episodes of Burn Notice, and Life... My idea is sound though, almost afraid to make it into a film for fear it gives a terrorist group any ideas... The premise has never been used to my knowledge and makes a great plot for a movie, in my opinion.
Thanks guys, now I just added even more workload to my "spare time" list.
 
Another movie that came out recently stole the title for what will be my first feature film (though I quickly found a better title)
 
Think of it like this. If the ideas that you're coming up with are in production already, at least you're pointing in the right direction. If you only came up with it earlier, you'd be the first.
 
Sweetie said:
Think of it like this. If the ideas that you're coming up with are in production already, at least you're pointing in the right direction. If you only came up with it earlier, you'd be the first.
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Story of my life, Sweetie. If you only knew all the things I've invented or thought of only to find out I was beaten by days or years...
:hmm:
 
Heck, a few years back weren't there like two or three Big Budget versions of Wyatt Eerps life story? It happens to the big stuidios too! I've seen them, and they're very different movies from one another, even then. No reason not to develop an idea just cause someone else did something like it.
 
rayw said:
If The Asylum can get away with doing it on purpose surely you can do it by coincidence.
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Exactly, I can use all the publicity I can get... :P

Zensteve said:
You have no reason at all to not be writing your script, apart from not wanting to.
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You're right, I will be developing this idea. I'm not much of a writer, but I'd love to get all the parts lined up and basics together for a go at it. A short may be in order, to build interest for this one...
:yes:
 
History is full of ideas that seemed to pop up at different places on earth at the same time.
The invention of radio, internal combustion engines and the airplane are examples. All had major development in different places by different people in a time when communication of ideas was slow.
I read a book about technology that helped the Allies win WWII and the similarities in ideas and research on opposite sides of the planet were spooky.
It's been said that "great minds think alike".
There are those who hold the theory that throughout mankinds history technology has been passed to us from higher beings who distribute it around the planet to keep one group from having an advantage. Now there's a concept for a movie.....feel free to use it and send me money if it works.
 
I was in the same boat. I had a half written script for a medieval comedy written, went to the cinema and seen a trailer for 'Your Highness' to say I left that cinema a little peeved would be an understatement. I still finished writing it though...think I even posted it on here a while back
 
welsh_gambit said:
I was in the same boat. I had a half written script for a medieval comedy written, went to the cinema and seen a trailer for 'Your Highness' to say I left that cinema a little peeved would be an understatement. I still finished writing it though...think I even posted it on here a while back
Click to expand...

Your Highness doesn't take place in medieval times, though. Also, the same genre doesn't mean the same idea.
 
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