Broken In Brief: Hollywood accidently commissions movie based on original idea

HOLLYWOOD—Today executives at 20th Century Fox studios were thrown into an uproar when they discovered that a film on which they had begun pre-production had not been based on any existing property, was not a cinematic retelling of a celebrity’s life, and was in no way a remake of a popular TV show or movie.

Compounding matters was the fact that the film, a taut look at the fractious relationships between a stressed police department and a beleaguered, crime ridden community, had already been locked into a contract ensuring the film had to be made.

“Oh shit, I thought this was a remake of Hill Street Blues! You mean it isn’t?” an incensed Peter Chernin, CEO of Fox, was heard to yell when informed of this catastrophe. “There’s going to be no audience for it! People can’t understand things that they haven’t already liked in another form! This is why we were in on the bidding for that View-Master movie and have guys working on a Shrinky Dink/X-Men crossover! Fuck!”

But real disdain for the project came when they found the film was a serious and sober look at the issues surrounding poverty, crime, law enforcement policy, and the decay of inner cities without one single car chase or clever one-liner delivered by a madman holding a flamethrower.

After hours of deliberation, executives decided that the only solution was to let the film finish shooting but to then make arbitrary demands on length and editing, cut a few terrible and misleading trailers, unceremoniously dump it onto as few screens as possible without advertising its existence, and finally chalking up the lack of success to the fickle tastes of the American public.