The movie industry has always been incapable of stopping itself from taking whatever is popular in current culture and tacking the phrase “: The Movie!” onto it in a lame attempt at making a quick buck. So, with the way social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have taken control of people’s lives over the last decade, and with the success that David Fincher had making The Social Network, a movie about the establishing of Facebook, it was always only a matter of time before we got hit with a deluge of embarrassing movies that had people sitting around on websites as their main conceit.
Well, when movie geeks of the future look back on this period of history, many years from now, Thursday, April 12, 2012 might be seen as the day that the dam finally burst in that respect. Not one, but two social media-inspired films have been announced as getting underway in the last few hours.
The first report comes from Variety, who says that My Week With Marilyn director Simon Curtis has decided that his second feature film will come from a script called Click to Connect. It was written by Liz Tuccillo, who co-wrote the best-selling book “He’s Just Not That Into You,” and it’s said to be a dating anthology set in the world of online dating sites like match.com and eHarmony. Curtis was reportedly drawn to the material, which is completely different from his period-set biopic debut, because he wants to show his range as a filmmaker. Let’s just hope that range doesn’t extend all the way to making horrible romantic comedies, a skill that seems to be a commodity in Hollywood.
The second upcoming project with a social media twist is called Status Update. According to Deadline SimsVille, it’s a spec script written by the duo of Sascha Rothchild and Randi Barnes, and it’s said to be a teen comedy that “utilizes social media, particularly Facebook.” Let me give you a second to get over that shudder that just hit you deep down, all the way to your soul.
Okay, let’s continue. Rothchild recently sold another pitch, Who Invited Her?, to Dreamworks, with Reese Witherspoon attached as the star. She’s also adapted her book, “How to Be Divorced by 30,” into a film project for Universal. Barnes, for his part, was the writer of the animated film, Dorothy of Oz, and as a team they’ve sold a TV pilot to NBC called My Best Friend is a Lesbo.
If you’ve gotten through all of the ridiculous titles in that last paragraph and made it all the way to the end without trying to drill into your brain, you are to be commended. There’s no proof that any of these upcoming projects are going to be anything less than excellent, but, my goodness, it sure is exhausting to have to consider them. Here’s to hoping the future of Internet-themed movies isn’t nearly as bad as we fear. Good night, and good luck.