I’m gonna lay something down on y’all: I am a girl.
I am a girl who read the first two volumes in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series and bawled because I remembered what it was like to be a girl who didn’t fit in, who felt that the only people she could trust were her group of tight-knit friends, and the woman that I am now mourned the loss of those friendships to time and distance.
That’s why at first I cheered when I read in Peter Bart’s and Michael Fleming’s Variety blog that author Ann Brashares had scored another movie deal based on her writings that hadn’t even been published yet.
According to Fleming:
New Regency and Peter Chernin won a bidding battle for screen rights to My Name is Memory, the first of a three-book series written by Ann Brashares. Deal was high six against seven figures.
Good for Brashares, I thought. She really knows how to appeal to teen and ‘tween girls, and she can write scenes like the ones where Tibby is coming to terms with her friend Bailey dying from childhood leukemia that can earn it a spot in the list of movies that pass the Bechdel Test.
And then I read the logline for the book series:
[The] series begins as a college age couple meets, and a young man makes a startling confession. Turns out their souls have been reincarnated over hundreds of years, but these soul mates keep losing each other. While he remembers the details of their previous lives—and his often exasperating attempts to connect with her romantically—she cannot recall the events of those past lives, nor the rivalry that exists with another soul that keeps getting in the way.
In fact, not only does that plot borrow too much from The Time Traveler’s Wife and Twilight, it also borrows a bit too much from Hancock, minus the superpowers.
You know what would make an excellent movie or series of movies? Why hasn’t some smart producer like Mean Girls‘ Jill Messick taken a look at the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld? It takes the best parts of the “Twilight Zone” episode originally titled “The Eye of the Beholder,” tosses it into a dystopian future worthy of 1984, adds in a Red Dawn-esqe resistance movement, and sets the whole blender on frappe.
Too bad I don’t have pots full of money, eh?
Nas says:
Sounds like somebody read Geoff Johns' Hawkman series, which has pretty much the same basic premise – Hawkman and Hawkgirl are two souls constantly reincarnating, but whenever they fall in love, they die and come back to repeat the cycle. Then, in their latest incarnation, Hawkgirl doesn't remember any of it and it's all troubles for our male lead.
Or, you know, like you said…Hancock.
joshquixote says:
My fiancee has read a book exactly like this, called “Reincarnation.” The only differences were that both the man and the woman couldn't remember, and there were two “souls getting in the way,” male and female as well.
So this is even more derivative than previously thought.
Also, she agrees that “Uglies” would make an awesome movie.
Gordon McAlpin says:
Calling a story “derivative” is tantamount to accusing the author of plagiarism.
It is very, very possible that more than one person comes up with the same idea. This doesn't mean it's good, of course, but I think people get hung up on ideas too often: it's not the idea that makes a movie truly good — it's the execution. A story whose only merits are the ideas contained within it won't hold up upon a second viewing/reading.
Simon says:
Interesting. The same idea seems to be making quite the rounds. Movies and books with a similar concept
Eternal Sunshine
The Notebook
Fifty First Dates
Hancock
The Fountain
and probably countless others that I haven't seen. There's no need to accuse anyone of plagiarism. The idea that true love can transcend the boundaries of death and time, that some people are meant to be together appeals to the romantics in everyone, and so it's natural that it should occur throughout popular fiction. I can't stand twilight though. Just had to get that in there.
Simon says:
Interesting. The same idea seems to be making quite the rounds. Movies and books with a similar concept
Eternal Sunshine
The Notebook
Fifty First Dates
Hancock
The Fountain
and probably countless others that I haven't seen. There's no need to accuse anyone of plagiarism. The idea that true love can transcend the boundaries of death and time, that some people are meant to be together appeals to the romantics in everyone, and so it's natural that it should occur throughout popular fiction. I can't stand twilight though. Just had to get that in there.