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What movie "stole" your ideas?

Started by aexombie, February 04, 2008, 07:40:09 PM

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aexombie

Ever watch a movie and the ideas are similiar to a story you had already written or were working on?

I gotta admit after watching K-Pax with Kevin Spacey, I was envious someone had the same ideas and was so far ahead in the game, it was a movie. 

Every story can be twisted and recycled and reincarnated, sure, but gosh darn it...Whyyyy can't everything just be mine. And stay mine. I'm sure a lot of deceased authors and film makers would be thinking this if they rose from the dead today. . .

Ed

Yeah - really annoying, isn't it? It must be even worse if you work for a year or more on something, only for somebody to yell plagiarism at you.  :huh:

The best thing to do with these old plots is to see if you can hit it from a different angle and put a new twist on it :afro:
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

Sallyq

It's happened to me to the nth degree. When I did nanowrimo a few years ago I wrote a novel called End Game. Mine was a futuristic thriller, with a black FBI agent as one of the main characters. My novel ended with the President's wife being implicated in the Pres's assassination. Last year my daughter loaned a DVD from Blockbuster, starring Cuba Gooding Jnr as a black government agent. It was called End Game, set in the present time, but it ended with the President's wife being implicated in the Pres's assassination ... :hot:

JonP

Bloody hell, that was a bit close, Sally! However, the important thing to remember is that there is nothing new under the sun. I give you Exhibit A: the entire career of J.K.Rowling. Before she wrote a single word, there was a series of very good kids' books by Jill Murphy, called "The Worst Witch", set in a boarding school for young witches. So was JKR phased by this? Not one bit. She did what Ed suggests and took a different angle altogether. Exhibit B: the best episode of Series 3 of the new Dr Who contained a very similar idea to the end of Back to the Future Part II. Exhibit C (speaking of Dr Who): the end of Series 2 was very similar to the end of The Amber Spyglass. Etcetera etcetera. I used to get really bothered about this, but then I realised that it's how you write it that really counts, not what you write about.

chaobell

It wasn't a movie, but back in November I was all set to start writing a part of 100 Candles that involved an eeevil mirror, anyone who looked into it long enough would eventually get whacked by their own reflection.

And then Silent Hill 0rigins came out, with its own crazy mirrors. Whoops, I thought, better change that mirror thing there. ^_^;

Actually the new and improved Monster of the Week worked even better, so I am glad for this.

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." --Benjamin Franklin

Geoff_N

writing Mirror stories is standard fodder for creative writing classes, so I'm afraid the publishers' inboxes are groaning with them.

In the 1980s I wrote a scifi novel. The premise was based on seeds from the Jurassic era brought to life by an experimental paleontologist. The seeds grew, hybridized with bindweed (hey I used a short story like this in the crit group). The weed grew out of control blah blah blah. A publisher sent me a note to say it is not rejected but being passed up committees. Twice. Then the reject letter quoted chunks of it back at me with praise, but the overal writing needed work, and they weren't sure of the plot structure. Two years later, one of their staff writers brought out Jurassic Park. Had MC seen my MSS and improved it into his blockbuster, or was it a coincidence? I've been told since that it wasn't unknown in those days for a manuscript with a chance to be passed around the departments and sent to better writers...  I had no idea of the importance of POV, show not tell, active not passive voice, avoiding pleonasms, etc in those days. I abandoned the story - threw away the manuscript, which was typed on my old Olivetti 32! But it will return as book 3 in my Left Luggage trilogy in a different form.

Last year my new digital enhanced hearing aids gave me bursts of sounds normal folk can't hear. Sometimes it was the proximity of the loop system for hearing aids, other times the bits of radio or TV signals seemed to be picked up. I could hear clocks and other sounds I'd not heard for years. So I had the idea of a story where someone was testing a super-hearing-aid for a military research lab. Many possibilities including hearing small sounds from a mile or so away but with other frequencies filtered out. eg hearing the hearbeat of someone out of sight. I'd skietched out the idea for a short story on this and guess what? Episode 16 of Heroes - Sylar meets and by killing her acquires the super hearing abilities of a woman garage mechanic. Grrrrr - not stolen but pre-empted.

Geoff

SamLeeFreak

Now when you say "Heros" and "Skylar" you mean "X-Men" and "Rogue," right?  ;)

JonP

Exactly!

And, speaking of mirrors, there is of course a magic mirror in Harry Potter.

littlelaniec

All the time!!

One in particular: Mine was a Star Trek episode! Only my main character was four they made him a teenager (same person too). Used very close to the same dialogue and title.
What really got me was the summer before I sent a draft to Pocket Books and was rejected for the SAME STORY!! Coincidence?


My son put it to me this way: "You should be happy that you're thinking like the professionals." The boy was 12 at the time!

Raven...blood goddess

Raven
Blood Goddess