Not content to turn pirates of the Caribbean into ghost chasers, Abraham Lincoln into a vampire hunter, Edgar Allan Poe into a rape detective, Little Red Riding Hood into a werewolf humper, Peter Pan into a 30-year-old wigger, etc., etc., Hollywood now aims its gaping flatulent butthole of crap ideas at Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.  A month ago I reported that Val Kilmer would be playing Wyatt Earp in a new take on the iconic lawman.  Today, we’ve got news of ANOTHER Wyatt Earp/Doc Holliday project, including a plot synopsis, and mother of God, all the tack hammers and all the cocaine in all the world could not make me dream up an idea this wildly idiotic:

Warner Bros. has preemptively picked up Wild Guns, a spec by T.S. Nowlin for Gianni Nunnari and his Hollywood Gang shingle to produce.

Described as having shades of Tombstone and Sherlock Holmes, the story is  set shortly after the Civil War and follows legendary gunslingers Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. The duo team-up to rescue the daughter of Sitting Bull, who has been kidnapped by a powerful Shaman with mysterious powers who is terrorizing the Western plains. [THR]

Oh God, the hot, vaguely ethnic sidekick, the watered-down, sugarcoated, politically-correct alternate history, the supernatural Macguffin… it sounds as if someone read Jerry Bruckheimer’s Soulless Drivel for Dummies.  And this wasn’t just an abandoned script, it was bought BY THE STUDIO THAT MADE  INCEPTION.  Ask yourself this: have you ever seen the words “powerful Shaman” show up in a good synopsis?  Last I remember it was in reference to Weekend at Bernies 2 or Like Father Like Son (with Kirk Cameron and Dudley Moore). But at the very least, this means there’s still a part for Nic Cage.

In case you were worried we wouldn’t get a fifth Pirates of the Caribbean film after the fourth one hits theaters in May, fret not, this bland, sh-tty franchise will be the last thing left on Earth along with cockroaches and Taco Bell taco meat.  The writers have already been hired.

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer says he has a screenplay in the works for a fifth “Pirates” tale after May’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” comes out.

Gosh, I hope it involves a curse, or a ghost, or a talking monkey, or a fat suit, or a lobotomy.

Bruckheimer says “On Stranger Tides” and future “Pirates” flicks will be stand-alone stories continuing the adventures of Depp’s woozy buccaneer Capt. Jack Sparrow.

“Woozy Buccaneer” — great name for a bar.

Directed by Rob Marshall (“Chicago”), “On Stranger Tides” sends Jack on a quest for the fountain of youth. Bruckheimer and Marshall showed off footage Tuesday at CinemaCon, a Las Vegas convention of theater owners.
“At test screenings of “On Stranger Tides,” “the audience told us what they loved about it is that it was fresh, it was new, it was a whole new story,” Bruckheimer said in an interview alongside Marshall. “As long as the audience embraces this one, we’ll certainly try to make another one. It’s really up to Johnny. He loves the character.”

“We showed this film to a whole parade of increasingly listless yokels we found loitering outside convenience stores during business hours.  They loved it, and we really tried to incorporate all of their suggestions.  We weren’t sure what ‘gravyplane’ meant, exactly, but the freshness, that was an idea we really tried to run with.”

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Deliciously feisty firecrotch Isla Fischer is set to star in Desperados, a film the LA Times is calling ‘a female Hangover.’  The LA Times must be idiots because this is blatantly a female Road Trip.  And there’s already a female Hangover, it’s called Bridesmaids.  Hey, Hollywood, how does your own tail taste?  Like snake sh*t, I bet.

Ellen Rapoport’s script, which landed on Hollywood’s esteemed Black List two years ago,  has the women heading to Mexico to set right a situation that had one of the women leaving a scathing message for a man she actually likes.

The comedy, about a trio of women on a quixotic mission, is moving forward at Universal (which, incidentally, is also behind “Bridesmaids”). Betty Thomas, the director of “Private Parts” and “Dr. Dolittle,” is set to be offered the director’s chair and is planning on accepting the job, according to  two people who were briefed on the project and were not authorized to speak about it publicly.  Isla Fisher was attached to “Desperados” last year, and the studio is currently seeking two other female leads. [LA Times]

To refresh your memory, here’s the plot of Road Trip, another Todd Phillips movie, from 2000:

Four friends take off on an 1800 mile road trip to retrieve an illicit tape mistakenly mailed to a girl friend.

And in turn, the synopsis of Overnight Delivery, a direct-to-video film from 1998 (on which Kevin Smith supposedly did an uncredited rewrite):

The main character Wyatt Trips, played by Paul Rudd, is a college student at Twin Cities College. He believes that his long-distance girlfriend, Kimberly Jasney, played by Christine Taylor, is not being faithful to him. As a result of this he goes to a strip club where he gets intoxicated and decides to send a letter to his girlfriend. With the letter he includes a picture of himself and a topless stripper. Trips soon discovers that his girlfriend was not, in fact, cheating on him, and that he has twenty-four hours to retrieve the package before it gets to his girlfriend. [Wikipedia]

First a video, then a picture, and now a phone message?  It’s like they keep re-using the same plot, but think they can trick us by going backwards with technology.  Five years from now it’s just going to be Willow Smith and Booboo Stewart chasing down a carrier pigeon.

"Bob, you're gonna say I'm crazy, but I think this could be a movie."

Look, don’t start adding stupid stuff to the comments section on this one, like “OH MY GOD, what’s next, an adaptation of (some equally ridiculous thing)?!?”  Trust me, nothing you put between those two parentheses could be any more ridiculous than something that’s already in some stage of development.  A gum wrapper.  A slideshow toy.  Inevitably, something you say as an example of the dumbest thing you can think of will actually come to pass.  It’s already happened to me at least twice (Family Circus, MMA saves the rec center).  Bottom line, you’re not going to parody Hollywood faster than they already parody themselves.  Okay, rant over. The latest dumb, non-movie thing being developed as a movie is the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

Producers Scott Glassgold and Raymond Brothers of IAM Entertainment have closed a deal for rights to develop a film centering on the department store’s annual parade in New York.
“We’re aiming to make a four-quadrant, family-friendly film somewhere in that Night At The Museum, Elf sweet spot,” Glassgold says.

“In order to more effectively convince people to buy our sh*t, we want to make a 90-minute commercial that feels like a concept that didn’t begin as an idea for a 90-minute commercial.  Do you think magic would work?  And remember, folks, you can’t spell ‘Glassgold’ without ‘ass gold.’”

The duo have begun meeting with writers and are exploring various concepts, even one where the floats spring to life.

Oh my God, even a concept where the floats spring to life?  That’s genius.  Before you said that I was just thinking Sean Penn could play a detective who has to solve his daughter’s rape inside one.

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See what I did with that headline there?  Pretty clever, right?

Over the weekend, Hollywood once again learned the hard way that no one wants to remember the 80s, as Take Me Home Tonight, which looked like a more pandering version of Adventureland for dumb people, actually earned less than Adventureland.  Wow, I did not see that coming.  Earning $3.5 million at 2,000 locations, it didn’t even crack the top 10.   If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s that maybe don’t name your movie after a song that was in a Carl’s Jr. commercial 15 years ago. It just sounds like a bad roast joke.  “I don’t want to say your movie was generic, but it’s named after a song from a Carl’s Jr. commercial from 15 years ago.”

Elsewhere, the Johnny Depp-voiced Rango took home the top spot with a respectable $38 million.  I saw it.   It looked great but was a chore to sit through, the same reason I eventually stopped dating high school chicks.  Overall business was down 32 percent from the same weekend last year, which is to be expected given Alice Wonderland opened last year, but worrisome considering February movie attendance hit a 15-year low.  I hate to point fingers, but this probably had something to do with Cedar Rapids being the only February release that was worth a hobo’s dick cheese.  Why the f*ck is that only playing on 235 screens again?  Is it so more people can see Just Go With It and Gnomeo and Juliet?  Or Big Momma’s House 3, perhaps?  I never thought I’d say this, but we seem to have reached a point where people are actually less stupid than Hollywood thinks they are.

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