4-13-07: LANDIS: The Movie (that hasn't happened)

Did you all know that I wrote a movie one time? Alright, not a FULL blown movie, and it was never made, but I wrote a movie treatment.

I'll probably get asked to take this down from Chris Crosby, my publisher, since it's still in early stages, and sometimes, apparently it can take years to get anywhere, but here's the deal.

I honestly don't feel as though LANDIS ever reached "the height of its popularity," but at the same time, it was getting what seems to be a million hits a month. Not necessarily all by new people, but sometimes by people re-going to the site...but alas.

It was about January of 2005, and Landis was nearing its end in about four months, and I was discussing writing a sequel with Crosby, but wanted to know when I should begin writing it, see if we could get Owen (Gieni, the original artist) to draw it, and keep the whole team together, and Chris said he had a better idea.

Keenspot had just helped a comic strip called YOU DAMN KID get optioned by FOX, so they figured now was the time to jump into other projects, get something written and try to go from there. Well, Crosby realized that LANDIS was a great project from the get go, (to which I'm extremely grateful, and he I hope knows that) and wanted to see if I could write a little something that was similar to the "first season" of Landis (the first 5 issues of the comic that were seen online) and see if we could make it into a treatment. He told me that a two hour "movie" is typically broken down into chapters, much like a comic book, and to go from there. If anybody optioned it as a TV show, you'd want that two hour block to be broken down to where every chapter has a cliffhanger, but otherwise, you just want to make sure that the story flows, you leave room for a sequel and you try to characterize what will happen, and set the pacing.

You obviously don't want to pace a story where a lot happens at the beginning and next to nothing happens at the end, or vice versa (achem, DEATH PROOF), but you try to balance it.

Trying to keep a small budget-minded story at the forefront (most movies from studios like LionsGate don't go over $4 million), I entered into writing thinking okay, you can do Vampire, you can do Everlasting (the term for the immortals in LANDIS), but you can't do super crazy CGI.

I wrote a treatment of LANDIS that was very in tune with the original miniseries, but also different enough to where it could truly be used as a second miniseries if I wanted to write it out for itself, and give the fans what they'd want and have asked for.

There was the chemical dump, there was a silhouetted Ardy (so we could try to keep CGI out of it with a low budget), and Landis and Tagger were actually helped by another Everlasting that was total Bad-ass, yet always got taken advantage of.

I won't ruin the story, but I sent it to Crosby. Unlike a lot of writers, I typically try to get it right the first time. You can ask him, rarely, if ever, does my work require a re-write, and if it does, its only because it goes away from the original image, which is not where I intended to go. I've had this with two stories (THIEF and ATOMIC TEEN) but otherwise, my written word is RARELY something different.

Crosby originally repsonded with a simple, "We need to talk about the Treatment..." and left it at that. I was upset, because I didn't know what was bad, but hell, I'd never written an eight chapter (in two paragraphs or less each) treatment, so any and all feedback, I'd take and try to do the re-write thing and make it better.

When I finally got in touch with Crosby he told me the long and short of it was, "It was good. I actually liked it" and then went on to say something like it was a good treatment and (thought not quoting him) he made it sound like he enjoyed it enough to want to push it forward.

Keenspot has an agency / agent that they use to push material. They thought it would be good for SCI-FI channel, and to my knowledge have sent it that far. Personally, I think Lion's Gate would be more interested in it, but I'm okay with shopping it to SCI-FI, which is owned by NBC.
I personally am not sure if the project was shopped past Crosby handing it to his agent, and that may be my fault. I'm very protective of my work, and don't like it being played with unless I know its work for hire. With LANDIS being creator-owned, I take Chris at his word, he's always been as honest with me as he can, but with him not having an interest in the project higher than possibly "Editor In Chief," he has less interest in seeing this get greenlighted than his own Superosity or any of the other projects him, Owen, his brother Bobby or anything he owns a part of getting that all important jump.

Now, I don't want you to think I'm dogging him. I'm not. Quite the opposite. He's given me oppurtunity not many others have...and its either he sees talent there, or he sees cheap and decent, and either way, I'm okay with it.

I always look to the stars, but honestly, he's helped me exceed a lot of the goals I had at once created for myself...Getting a comic printed...check...getting a color comic printed...check. getting my character Ardy and Landis seen by over 20,000 people, check....these are things that not many small press guys can say, and to this, I'm very thankful for Chris' ambition...

I still whine to him that I want LANDIS to see print, because it may help TV execs into making a faster decision on to give LANDIS a greenlight...not to mention THAT particular labor of love NEEDS to be in book format.

While I'm giving kudos, make sure to check out superosity.com for craziness from Crosby, and check out sorethumbsonline.com to see the same type of hilarity from Crosby and Owen.