The Most Wonderful Thing Ever

If you haven’t been paying attention, a press agent was all over the news and social media with the exciting news that the rights to the Most Important Event in western culture have been sold to a major motion picture company. 

Don’t ask me what Important Event I’m speaking of. I have no idea when, if ever, anyone will read this. I’m just confident that on any given day some slick ballyhoo will be all over the media peddling some permutation of Intellectual Property. 

If Warner Brothers or Paramount or UA drops into your daily feed and passes itself off as news, if they exclaim how you should be excited about their latest acquisition, don’t you believe them. Its all a whopper of great proportion. 

The Film Director might be excited. They are an odd sort in the first place. Most will just be hungry to get a chance to stand behind a camera and hope no one stops to ask them what they actually do around here. The IP to them is just a vehicle, all the better for it being known worldwide. Their first order of business will, as always, be altering the beginning, middle and end of the tale while maintaining the overall spirit. 

The Actors could be excited. They might be even remotely aware of the IP. Unfortunately spending your entire life pretending to be someone else too often leaves little time for them to be themselves. At worst they will turn in a performance so compelling it will earn them a tiny statue and years of expensive therapy. At best they will be hung by wires in front of a green screen for the better part of a month’s worth of afternoons. 

The producers and studios could not care less about any of this. It is from them the legion of press agents flow. The studio’s only goal is to get you to buy the tickets, buy their merchandise and fudge the books so that they never have to pay the Director or the Actors. Producers are only excited insomuch as the shareholders and investors let them be. 

It’s nice to know that some story or game that you love is also loved by so many other people. It’s a sad fact of life that the joy and excitement you felt when you first discovered that thing can never be replicated nor recovered.