Here’s the trailer for “Michael Bay’s Angry Birds” that’s been going around for the last two days.  It already has more than two million views, because haha, wouldn’t it be great if Hollywood did something that stupid???  That’s just like them!  NO.  SHUT UP.  It’s not funny to do a parody of a pointless adaptation anymore, because no matter how stupid of a non-movie thing adaptation you dream up, it’s all but GUARANTEED that something TWICE AS STUPID is already ACTUALLY IN DEVELOPMENT.  For one thing, execs at Rovio, the makers of Angry Birds, were already meeting with Hollywood execs about a movie adaptation back in August.  So your facetious idea for an Angry Birds movie?  Yeah, it’s already being discussed.  Now shut up, you’re just encouraging them.

Further proving my point, the Hollywood Reporter today reports that the Candyland movie (!!!!) has picked up both a director, Kevin Lima of Enchanted, and writers Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Burger of Kung Fu Panda.  I’m going to post a block quote now. I hope the stupid isn’t contagious.

The board game, which was set up at Universal when it made its six-year deal with Hasbro in 2008, has a story centered around finding the lost king of Candy Land. The players wind their way through enchanted lands such as Candy Cane Forest and Gum Drop Mountain, see characters such as Princess Frostine and Gramma Nutt as well as the evil Lord Licorice who can make players lose a turn.

I hope Nic Cage plays the mysterious King of Candyland. They say he’s gone native. They eventually find him, sitting on a throne made of lolly skulls, surrounded by Gingerbread Peoples’ corpses hanging from trees like Candy Canes, wearing a rock candy helmet over his enormous skull.  “You’re an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill.”  Then C-Tates will do a pop and lock number intercut with a cow being slaughtered, it rains skittles, and everyone blows their brains out.

"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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Behold, the stupidest story in history. That’s right, someone just paid SEVEN FIGURES for the rights to FAMILY CIRCUS, the worst comic strip in the paper, which is like being the world’s shortest midget, or Helen Keller in the valley of the blind. Having to put a positive spin on stories like this is what drives Variety writers crazy.  My journalistic inverted pyramid for this: 1. This is the stupidest thing that has ever happened.  2. Who what where when how. 3. Of course it was Fox.

20th Century Fox has teamed with Walden Media to buy rights to Bil Keane’s venerable [please kill yourself] syndicated comic strip The Family Circus, and they’ve hired Bob Hilgenberg & Rob Muir to script a live action feature. It is the most widely syndicated strip in the world, according to King Features. A number of studios competed for the rights for what is envisioned as a multiple quadrant family franchise. [Deadline]

The COMIC isn’t even multiple quadrant.  It is literally one frame.  Who the hell are these people?  The only way Family Circus has entered the public consciousness AT ALL in the last 20 years is when film characters are mystified by how unbelievably sucky it is, like Timothy Olyphant in Go. These people cannot be the same species as me.

Though several members of the Keane clan have become film animators, Bil Keane resisted making a film deal all these years. Producer Baldecchi spent two years trying to track them down. He got Keane’s number, but never had his messages returned. [I'M BIL KEANE, MUTHAF*CKA! I'M WAY TOO BUSY THINKIN' UP PUNS! -Ed.] One day, Baldecchi called and Keane picked up the phone. He made enough of an impression that Keane introduced the producer to his son Jeff. Soon they had an agreement to move forward and then studios got involved. I’m told the deal was six figures against seven-figures [in "blank" against "blank" deals, the second number is how much you get if they actually make the movie] and went to Fox and Walden, which are partnered in the upcoming The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

I was sitting here trying to figure out why this project sounded so familiar, and then I realized: I had the idea for a Family Circus movie myself TWO YEARS AGO, LITERALLY AS AN EXAMPLE OF THE DUMBEST THING I COULD THINK OF.  So for the writers trying to get a feel for this project, Hilgenberg & Muir (currently hard at work on Meet the Haunteds), here’s the secret.  Are you ready?  Okay, here goes: THINK OF AN IDIOTIC, PAINFULLY UNFUNNY ONE-WORD PUN. EXAMPLE: DRAW JEFFY AT HIS GRANDMA’S FUNERAL WITH A PUP TENT IN HIS PANTS.  GIVE HIM A SPEECH BUBBLE THAT SAYS, “BUT DADDY, YOU NEVER WARNED ME ABOUT MOURNING WOOD!” CONGRATULATIONS!  YOU ARE DONE!  YOU HAVE WRITTEN EVERY FAMILY CIRCUS COMIC FOR THE LAST 160 YEARS!  COLLECT ONE MILLION DOLLARS, CACKLE WILDLY AT THE STUPIDITY OF MANKIND!

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Wow, a Seltzer-Friedberg joint wasn’t good?  Who knew, huh?  I like how you can’t show a nipple on TV, yet Fox continues to distribute these guys’ movies without fear of a boycott.  I’d rather support Al-Qaeda.

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If you’ve seen five minutes of any of their movies (Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie, Epic Movie), you know that without a doubt, Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg are two of the finest satirists ever to live.  The way they skewer societal paradigms with Paris Hilton impersonators getting hit by cars and Lady Gaga slipping on a banana peel… (*kisses fingertips*) magnifique.  Acclaimed film critic Armond White once said of the duo, “they stand so lonely on pop-culture’s fringe that their a la carte recidivism seems absolutely contre-jour when compared to the ersatz Hollywood j ne sais quois.”

Well sadly, it seems those two national treasures may not receive the compensation they so richly deserve for their upcoming masterpiece “Vampires Suck.”  According to a new report, it has been downloaded illegally 100,000 times.

An unfinished copy of “Vampires Suck,” Fox’s the hotly anticipated [!!!] parody of “Twilight”, has now been downloaded more than 100,000 times since its leak more than a month ago, according to TorrentFreak.
Now faced with another major leak, Fox’s legal department has quietly become more aggressive, sending takedown requests to torrent sites and Google. They likely want to avoid the fate of the 2004 parody film “Soul Plane,” [!!!] which prompted an FBI investigation after pirated copies flooded the black market weeks before its release.
“Soul Plane” was cited as one of the first Hollywood films to be impacted by digital piracy [the horror!]. Will pirates suck the life out of “Vampires Suck?” [LORD GOD I HOPE NOT!] Fox is publicly downplaying down the leak [DERP!], saying the incident occurred a month ago and there isn’t anything new to report. [Yahoo/THR]

That’s depressing.  Not the piracy, the fact that 100,000 people actually wanted to see Vampires Suck.  Illegally downloading a Seltzer-Freebird movie is like stealing a Susan Boyle sex tape.