So You Accidentally Made an Original Movie

Practical advice for fixing Hollywood's biggest oopsie.

New writer alert! Josh Granovsky is a writer based in Los Angeles. His credits include “Sullivan’s Crossing” (The CW) and an article in his college newspaper that got him a Twitter follow from Missy Elliott.

Photo by Christian Chen on Unsplash

Uh oh, your worst nightmare has come true! You spent years looking for an inoffensive script… you hired a wildly Instagram-famous cast and crew to bring your risk-averse vision to life... and you shelled out $150 million for its production, which everyone knows is the minimum one can spend to make a movie in 2025.

Then, just when it was finally ready to hit theaters and pay for your 12-second trip to Mars, you discovered your movie isn’t based on a comic book. Or a toy. Or even an older movie that was seen as a flop when it first came out, but is now considered a massive success simply because the general population was once aware of its existence. No, you accidentally made a completely singular, wholly unique, 100% never-been-done-before original film.

Don’t panic! Yes, it is statistically impossible for audiences to enjoy a film they didn’t already love in childhood. But there are still a few things you can do to fix this problem before you’re exiled to movie jail.¹

1. Double, triple, and quadruple check that it’s original.

There have been so many stories told throughout history (at least a thousand). Are you absolutely sure this one is new? Order your unpaid intern to go through every single film, comic, and book ever to see if your plot is similar enough to call it a “remake.”

2. See if an existing franchise will adopt your movie.

Through clever editing, marketing trickery, and an earnest disdain for quality filmmaking, any movie can be seamlessly integrated into a proven cinematic universe. Can you cut your film in a way that makes it unclear who the protagonist’s father is? Congratulations, you just made a Mamma Mia. Is anyone in your movie faced with a really hard task? Sounds like a Mission: Impossible to me. Do your characters travel to any location via car? That’s a Fast and Furious, you lucky bastard. Or a live-action Cars. Or maybe a prequel called Transformers: Before the Cars Knew They Could Transform.

3. Invent a fake IP based on your original movie that your original movie can be based on.

Here’s the great thing about intellectual property: it doesn’t matter what it is, only that it ever was. Just have your screenwriter do an unpaid rewrite—trust me, they know the drill—and adapt your movie into a play or a podcast. Or even the most valuable IP of all: an unpublished short story about a vaguely dangerous outer space mission and the Gosling-esque astronaut who is only mildly stressed about it.

4. Axe the film and write it off for tax purposes.

Oh, thank goodness. Turns out you can avoid ever doing anything as horrible as “taking a creative swing” by simply dragging that file into the trash and moving some numbers around with the help of your corporate accountant.

Now, I will warn you, this method does run the risk of pissing off the workers who gave their mental, physical, and spiritual selves to the act of producing art that millions of people around the world might cherish, derive comfort from, and identify with. But does any of that really matter? Not as much as getting first-class leg room on that sweet Mars trip, right?

I’ll meet you at the accountant in ten—and you better believe I’m taking a cut.

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Enormous thanks to Chortle’s newest paid subscriber, Nancy H. Support from our readers makes it possible to publish 100% original writing like today’s piece. (Do you see what I did there?)

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1. (Hallmark movies.)