✍️ Writer’s Quotes to Live By
“It slightly depends on your perspective, sort of how you look at these things, but when I sit down to write a script, I'm not planning to write a script; I'm planning to make a film, and so I only see the script as being just a step there.”
— Alex Garland
✍️ Overwatch: The Game and The Book
The video game “Overwatch”, is the game that your own child, niece or nephew can’t stop talking about, and with that enthusiasm… it’s getting released in book form. The publishing powerhouse Scholastic is releasing a ‘The Hero of Numbani’ based on character Numbani hero Efi Oladele and is slated for a 2020 release date.
It seems to be the only way to get kids reading these days is to give them a book based on a video game. It’s adaptations in reverse, I promise in the not too distant future kids will be heard saying (sarcastically) “the game was better than the book.”
According to Amazon, “The Hero of Numbani” will be released in May 2020 from author Nicky Drayden, who is best known for “The Prey of Gods,” a futuristic novel set in South Africa.
CULTURE
✍️ Is ‘JOKER’ Pushing Our Comedic Buttons?
In the age of PC culture, are artist afraid to take creative leaps and risks due to fear of a career ending faux pas due to people being offended? Well, Director Todd Phillips has been very vocal about the attack on comedy as of late in a new interview with Vanity Fair:
“Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture,” Phillips told VF. “There were articles written about why comedies don’t work anymore — I’ll tell you why, because all the f***ing funny guys are like, ‘F*** this shit, because I don’t want to offend you’.
Creatively a huge risk can be given to Warner Bros, for handing the reins to Todd so he could gamble with the “JOKER” film, and it paid off HUGE with a film gross of 94 million at the box office this past opening weekend.
*I really want to know your thoughts on this one with best response being quoted in
Wednesday’s edition of the newsletter.
Do you think comedy has gotten soft because of PC culture? Or are comics and comedy as a genre held accountable for what they say?
✍️ Apple TV+ Requests Your Presence in the APPLE Eco-System
The tech behemoth Apple, which can’t stop spitting out iPhones, wants to LITERALLY buy your attention as evidenced in their spending of $13 million on ads (last week alone) attempting to hype up their latest money maker, Apple TV+. You can’t escape the ads for the streaming network from the tech giant which is slated to launch November 1st.
At first glance, all the series they’re showing feel like stale or fake ads for series. They feel as if they’ve been run through a ton of ad marketing to see what people like, and all the creativity has been wrung out and left lifeless. Maybe that’s my hyper-critical mind running, but I’ve heard other people say the ads for Jennifer Aniston’s “Morning Show” and M. Night Shyamalan’s “Servant” just do not look APPEALING.
I’m over another streaming network, password login, company coming for $10-$15 in my checking account every month. I am for the doors that will be opened for screenwriters to create original TV series though, so it’s a win for creatives, but a loss for the publics’ pocket books.
✍️ Alex Garland Finds a Great Fit in Television
Author/writer/director, Alex Garland (Ex- Machina), has found TV to be quite rewarding these days with the upcoming arrival of his debut series “DEVS” on FX. Garland ran into creative speed bumps on both of his filmmaking outings with distribution issues on both 2014’s “Ex Machina,” as well as his 2018 film “Annihilation”. The headache of the business of distribution and having the art make sense financially is what pulled Alex towards television.
Garland said. “I just got sick of it… I thought maybe [film] isn’t the right space for me. Basically, it’s not mainstream. So I thought TV might be the right home.”
It was 2017 when Garland landed the eight-episode limited series order from FX and has been hard at work ever since on “Devs,” starring Nick Offerman, Sonoya Mizuno, and Karl Glusman.
The series details haven’t been leaked, but is said to deal with AI and the development of it between human and computer interaction. Still a very vague description, so we’ll just wait and see what Garland has in mind.
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