Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Arrgh! I Been Pirated!

Well damn!

You may recall I wrote a book or two about pirates.  It didn't start out that way though.  My original idea was about a band of pirates so bad at what they did as to be laughable.  The only way to convey it, I believed, was as a stop-motion animated movie in the style of Wallace and Gromit or The Nightmare Before Christmas.

I was convinced it would be a huge hit, bigger than Finding Nemo, which was a huge hit at the time.  Alas, I realized I was not a Hollywood writer and even if I were, I was savvy enough to realize that whatever I wrote would wind its way through massive re-writes, multiple re-writers and the final project would end up looking nothing like my original idea.

So I made it a book instead.  Which has gone through massive re-writes, although with only one writer, but the final product ended up looking nothing like my original idea.

But somehow, my original idea ended up getting made, although not by me.  Which makes me wonder if I wasn't too loose-lipped somewhere down the line and my idea found its way into the ears of the fine people at Aardman Animation Studios, which is set to release The Pirates: Band of Misfits.

To be fair, from what I can tell, they have done it much like I would have, so I can't be too disappointed.  Heck, I'll even watch it with my son when he's old enough to realize Dad once had a good idea someone else made some money off.

Arrgh!

2 comments:

Steven J. Wangsness said...

I would be flattered if someone ripped off my novel. How I could turn that into excellent publicity!

jkraus8464 said...

This does not remind me at all of your story. It tells me that pirates are popular so take it out, dust it off and keep working.