Most movies and stories start from nothing. Just an idea in the head of a writer for a character or a story and it gets fleshed out from there. Some movies get “based” on something. Either a true story, or something from another medium like a comic book or novel or even video game. So why not go all the way and start a story based on… a bubblegum comic… like Bazooka Joe.
Yes, that’s right friends. That little comic strip that would be on the inside of your bubblegum wrapper is apparently set to get the big screen treatment. The folks over at Cinematical give us this:
Michael Eisner (who owns Topps, the co. that makes the gum) and his Tornante Co. are producing, and they’ve grabbed newcomer and fresh film graduate Mark Hammer to pen the script. Why a super-fresh newcomer? It seems that he had a spec that was so killer, it got him this gig.
So its safe to say they’re going to build the movie around the CHARACTER of Bazooka Joe ranther than the STORY of Bazooka Joe. Fair enough.
Honestly I don’t see any problem with this. It’s just a character, its their starting point, they’ll build something around it. Not sure how this is any different than starting with just a blank piece of paper.
I’ll give something like this a better chance at “success” than a video game movie any day since developing a video game movie come with a truck load of preconditions that the studios feel they have to meet (ie. You have to include this character, you have to include this event, you have to include this tag line, you have to include this action, you have to include this plot point, etc etc etc).
