Remember when they thought it would be a good idea to make a Dilbert animated series? They were wrong. Well now, according to I Watch Stuff, they think it would be a great idea to make a live-action (italicized for are-you-serious emphasis) feature film of Dilbert. Yeah, seriously. This announcement comes as everyone eagerly (?) awaits the release of Marmaduke.
So really, newspaper comic movies have not always been the best ideas or the most successful ventures. I’m looking at you here, Garfield. But there could definitely be some genuinely entertaining features based off our favorite daily funnies. So movie studio executives, I hope you’re reading, because these pitches are going to blow your mind:
1. Zits
This coming of age story recounts the life of Jeremy. After a huge fight with his on-again, off-again girlfriend Sara, he enters a punk phase from which his parents cannot extract him. But with the help of his heavily-pierced friends, he finally works up to courage to confront Sara about his feelings. Meanwhile, he has to deal with a prying mother and a father whose sole character trait is ineptitude with technology. In the end, everyone learns a little something about love, not doing laundry, and excessive sarcasm.
2. The Family Circus
This film will take stop-motion animation to a whole new level. Instead of presenting frames spliced together in fraction-of-a-second intervals to appear as a semi-fluid motion, we will show frames of completely unrelated events for full minutes on end. Can you say avant-garde? P.J. gets muddy and says something cute about it, then cut to a drawing by Billy, then mother is upset because someone tracked in mud, then another drawing by Billy. Audiences will leave with a new perspective on life. One that involves a lot of asking, “was that supposed to be funny?”
3. The Far Side
A group of careless scientists are given an unrealistic amount of resources, and what do they do? Create several hybrid races and super-brained animals of course! All of a sudden, the world is plagued by human flies and talking dinosaurs. Giant aliens attack unsuspecting housewives who remain hilariously oblivious to whole situation. In fact, pretty much the whole movie is about people who are hilariously oblivious to the absurdities around them. Except Jeff Goldblum. He demands action.
4. Mark Trail
This film will continue where An Inconvenient Truth left off, with Leonardo DiCaprio playing all roles. He embodies Mark Trail’s environmentalism, and Mark Trail’s enemies’ goatees. In the end, it’s revealed that the whole movie took place on a terraformed moon after Earth was destroyed by environmentalists. That’ll show those hippies. Bet they didn’t see that coming.
5. Slylock Fox
The biggest mystery blockbuster of summer 2013 is bound to be Slylock Fox. Terry Turtle has been murdered, and Slylock Fox is on the case. With his uncanny ability to notice the differences between a picture of a room both before and after a murder, combined with his uncanny penchant for solving irritating riddles, there’s no case he can’t solve. George Clooney voices Slylock and James Carville stands in for the corpse of Terry Turtle.
6. Get Fuzzy
I know what you’re thinking, execs. This is gonna be too similar to Garfield. But hear me out. When one of Bucky’s get rich quick schemes goes horribly awry and he is kidnapped, Joe must make the ultimate choice. Only Satchel has the intellect required to retrieve Bucky successfully, but it’s sure to be a suicide mission anyway. Who will Joe choose? The cat or the dog? Spoiler: he picks the ferret.
7. Red and Rover
When Red is recruited by the U.S. Government to use his animal-whispering abilities as a weapon, Rover is charged with the task of rescuing him. But in the end, it turns out the communication has been entirely in Red’s head the whole time, and he is institutionalized. There he meets Jack Nicholson, who fills his head with crazy ideas of escape. In a tragic twist of fate, Red escapes with Nicholson just as Rover found the hosptial where he was being kept. The two never meet again. Basically it’s the next Marley and Me.
8. Broom-Hilda
Finally, a film recounting the quest of Broom Hilda. We all know the classic story. As the ex-wife of Attila the Hun, Hilda scours the land looking for a new husband. But her being a with in more than just name makes that quite difficult. But here’s the twist. We get Kristen Stewart to play Hilda, and instead of being Attila’s ex, she’s fresh off a relationship with a werewolf. And instead of looking for a husband, she’s looking for a vampire boyfriend. And instead of being a witch, she’s a weak, sex-starved high school student with no character depth or appealing traits to speak of. Current box office trends indicate it’ll be a real money-maker.
9. Cathy
Ack, indeed.
10. Calvin and Hobbes
I’ve been making a lot of weird jokes, but let’s get serious for a moment. This could be a great film. If it could encapsulate the charm from Where the Wild Things Are, but with a more solid plot, I think it could be a legitimate hit, and a high quality piece of cinema. I’m sure it’ll never come to fruition, but a boy can dream, right? Then the sequel could be exclusively about Spaceman Spiff. James Cameron could direct.
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