Oscilloscope Takes U.S. Rights To ‘Reality’
‘Mud’: Did Cannes Save One Of The Best For …
Will Smith’s ‘MIB3′ Beats …
Cannes Podcast: Pete Hammond On ‘Lawless’, …
Over-Achievers Of This Year’s Upfront
Aussie Pay-TV Shakeup Impacts Hollywood
USA: ‘Rebounding’ & ‘Modern …
Interview: Philip Kaufman At Cannes With ‘Hemingway …
R.I.P. Television Mogul Lee Rich
Cannes Biz Shines Despite Wind & Rain
Full 2011-2012 TV Season Series Rankings
2011-12 Season Network Rankings: Fox Still On Top But Down, …
HLN Set To Air Daytime Emmy Awards
Grant Bowler Cast As Richard Burton Opposite Lindsay Lohan …
UPDATE: Dish Network And Broadcasters Ask Courts To Decide …
Cannes Surprise Screening: Change Of Plans On Juan Antonio …
Kevin Hart In Talks To Join Kevin James In ‘Valet …
Anthony Hopkins Up For ‘Red 2′ Villain; Can …
Cannes Conflicted Over ‘The Paperboy’ As …
RATINGS RAT RACE: ‘American Idol’ Posts …
Ghost Of 2004 Hovers Over L.A. Screenings As Int’l …
DreamWorks has acquired Voices from the Dead, an original script by Changeling and Thor scribe J. Michael Straczynski. The thriller is based on the friendship between magician Harry Houdini and mystery author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. They were actually friends, but the script is a fictional account of how they teamed up with a psychic to solve bizarre murders in 1920s New York. CAA made the deal.
Loading ... Loading ...
Oh yeah? Try this… I’ll accept paypal bids starting at 1 million dollars; and don’t try and rip this off cuz it’s registered…
Jesus and Frankenstein team up with Babe Ruth during the 1929 World Series to stop The Wicked Witch of The East (this is b4 the house fell on her) who, with Boba Fett (who got stranded on Earth while he was hunting Megatron) are trying to blow up the world.
Can you say pre-awareness?
Well, Houdini and Conan Doyle started out as friends but became enemies because Conan Doyle was a committed believer in spiritualism and communication with the dead, while Houdini was committed to debunking the psychics of the time and exposing them as frauds. I’m a little disappointed with the description of this script because this is another case where the real history is much more interesting than the fictional account. (
And now that this is in production, well, that scraps my idea of writing a script about the real thing…).
The script addresses all of that.
The script is excellent.
My God, Hollywood, stop buying this G-doggit idea over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Unless it’s THE NEXT BIG THINGS’ PITCH… Jesus and The Babe, hard to go wrong with that!
ENOUGH with this idea.
When I was a Reader, I read several scripts and books with this same concept — Houdini, Conan Doyle (along with Poe, Mary Shelly and whoever else they can throw in from that era) team up to investigate a supernatural crime.
Been there, done that. @Skippy, you can skip this concept — no offense but it’s been out there for a long time. Good luck with another high concept spec.
But I think you missed my point–that those type of scripts you describe are exactly what I’m not interested in. I’d rather see the real stories than all those Mary Shelley gets together with Jane Austen to fight werewolves types of stories. I just meant that if there’s a fiction story using real life figures that’s already sold, no one is going to be interested in the real thing.
Thanks, man. Glad someone out there recognizes.
You can just see it: Jesus is all about turning water into wine, and The Babe is all about boozing. Babe likes broads; Jesus is all chaste. Meanwhile Frankenstein is all like, “Ughhhhh!”
I’ve got hotness like that on tap, Hollywood. Just holler at me. I’ll keep d-boys and girls hella busy.
Boring.
This is the exact same plot as Edge of the Unknown a graphic novel that’s currently making the rounds. There’s nothing original about Voices of the Dead and Straczynski could be sued by whoever acquires Edge of Unknown. He probably read the comic book and decided to do his own version of it but the two plots are the same with the same characters. The only difference is his script takes place in New York and Edge of Unknown is set in Los Angeles.
Tom Wheeler (THE CAPE) published a terrific book in 2004 called THE ARCANUM with nearly this exact same idea. It was sold to Miramax for features, and then acquired by Gold Circle.
Nothin’ new under the sun…
Arcanum was an absolute mess of a project. Worse than the Cape and that was pretty bad and cancelled.
And Jeff Phillips and Brian Haberlin wrote the graphic novel HOUDINI which also has a similar team up. It was developed by DiBonaventura after it was at Lion Rock.
Sorry, Watson, but you’re off base and out of line. Doyle and Houdini were real people, their friendship was real, and putting them into a murder mystery is not only the obvious way to use them, it’s a frequent motif: in the last fifty years there have been dozens of stories using that approach, some good, some bad. The comic book isn’t the first. It isn’t even the fifteenth. We can only wait to see how this one fares.
And as for Edge of the Unknown: that was the title of Doyle’s book about his friendship with Houdini, the last book he ever wrote. The Doyle estate still controls that book and that title, unlike the Sherlock Holmes books, so unless they have permission from the estate to use that title, they’re the ones who can be sued.
So now common titles are copyrightable? Not in my lifetime. Titles that refer to specific books are copyrightable NOT titles that are not referring to the same story.
No, common titles are not. But if you’re making a comic book about Doyle, and you use the title of his last book, about the very subject you’re writing about, then it’s not a common title any more. It’s not “Edge of the Unknown” about a rescue in a mine, you’re taking that story about that person from that book, and that’s not legal.
There have been more than 30 Houdini/Conan-Doyle mash-ups in books, graphic novels, plays, movies, and television, with pretty much this exact same premise.