Verbinski to turn WSJ article into a film
Filed under: Culture, News items, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Just before we get started, it's probably worth mentioning that we're quite fond of Gore Verbinski's work to-date. This does not offset the creeping trepidation that we might feel about Verbinski and Universal having snagged the movie rights to a Wall Street Journal article about Second Life user Ric Hoogestraat.
No, not rights to Hoogestraat's story, or that of his wife, or of his virtual spouse. Movie rights to a newspaper article. It isn't even really a terribly interesting story, as the stories of Second Life users generally go.
The essence of Hoogestraat's story is a simple one. He ran a bunch of businesses in Second Life (which we believe were profitable), and had a relationship with another user (Janet Spielman) online, during which he neglected his wife and kids. Hoogestraat's wife treated it like an affair, and Hoogestraat himself considered it all a game.
While not exactly common this sort of thing isn't unheard of.
Back in my great-grandma's day people would often fall in love by post, over a period of months or years, before finally meeting and marrying. My great-grandma did just that, in fact, and nobody thought that was the least bit odd or unusual. Apparently doing the same sort of thing over the Internet or the telephone is considered a bit peculiar in this day and age.
We're interested to see if any actual virtual environment as-we-know-it actually even makes it into this film. With all due respect to Verbinski and Steven Knight (who is pitched to write it) we don't think it is likely that we can expect the sort of stark and everyday technological realism of Nora Ephron's "You've got mail!" to make it into the script.
Basically, we'll be a bit surprised if anything recognizably like Second Life ends up in front of audiences -- because, frankly, Hoogestraat's story is a simple one about human relationships and not about technology. The sort of story that we'd normally expect an indie filmmaker to tackle.
Think more Contact than The Matrix. If Universal ends up shelling out the big bucks for digital effects, then they probably wasted their time licensing the original article, because they'll have lost the plot (so to speak).
We understand that an unannounced movie involving Second Life may already be in production. It will be interesting to see how the two films compare.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Patchouli Woollahra said on 2:47PM 12-18-2008
This is either madness or brilliance.
It's remarkable how often those two shreds coincide.
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Moe Greene said on 3:56PM 12-18-2008
At best this story will be totally aborted into something that will see it's only exposure on the SciFi channel.
The problem with this story is there is no hero or villan that we can latch onto as identifiable in a positive way; or even endearing. Now, if they turned his SL gf into some sort of stalker and have him see the err of his ways and save his family (think Hackers meets Basic Instinct) they may have something. But as written, this is boring.
Another issue is public perception of the virtual world dooming this from the start. While I have met some very attractive people online, producers will have a real dillema here. How do you cast this year's Scarlett Johannson and whoever her hot male equivalent is these days in the leading roles without people shaking their heads muttering, "These people live in a fantasy world, why?" They could ugly up the cast but then you lose the geeks that may actually go to see this.
Dwight Shelford is the only SL avatar that made a successful appearance in mainstream media.
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Viajero Pugillist said on 10:22PM 12-18-2008
Should be a compelling yarn. More titilating make-a-buck crap for the masses, I betcha.
As an aside, who are the "We", as in "we're quite fond..." and "We're interested to see...".
How may of you are there, or should we address you as "Your Majesty"?
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Tateru Nino said on 11:41PM 12-18-2008
'We' refers to the staff here at Massively. We frequently discuss all sorts of things around the office, and when 'we' have an aggregate opinion, 'we' mention it :) Not all the opinions and views are necessarily those of the individual writer.
You'll notice that there's a distinction above between we and me (fifth paragraph) - that's where I'm speaking for myself, rather than for us as a group.
Not every one of us participates in every discussion - we'd hardly have time to do anything else if that were so - but generally opinions aggregate between about three and about a dozen of us.
Viajero Pugillist said on 1:08AM 12-19-2008
Thanks for the clarification, and I'm glad to hear there is not more than one personality inside you. Being as you are Aussie, I hope and suspect you wouldn't identify too closely with the Monarchy, either. :)
btw, Are your office group discussions virtual, or do you all share a cramped, dingy, smoke-filled newsroom with plastic avatar collector models? Now there's a novel idea for a film setting.
Tateru Nino said on 3:17AM 12-19-2008
Well, we like to imagine that our office is all that. It is pretty much entirely virtual. Oh, there's some accounts and advertising people and the army of undead zombie lawyers - they have actual buildings (the walls keep them from contaminating the general public), but the rest of us are scattered all over the globe.
Besides - would *you* want to share a physical office with the Turpster? ;)