You got rights to that? Hollywood taps unlikely sources for movie material

By Sarah Sluis

It used to be that movies were based on original ideas or adapted from a book or play. When a movie drew inspiration from actual events, they were usually concerning historical figures or events known to the general public--Gandhi, true crime, or that thinly veiled portrait of Hearst in Citizen Kane. Moreover, Hollywood didn't have a problem fictionalizing the objects and places in everyday life. People used detergent and ate cereal with made-up brand names. In National Lampoon's Vacation, they went to Walley World, even though everyone knew they were talking about Disneyland.

But times have changed. Nowadays, Hollywood frequently picks up the rights to story fragments, objects, games, action figures, and newspaper articles, and then creates a story around them. Sometimes they are well-known (Monopoly), and other times they are relatively obscure (the pickup of a newspaper article about a family that had architects build puzzles into their house).

The latest such project is the pickup of a WEBSITE. You heard me, a U-R-L. DreamWorks has acquired the rights to website Musunahi (www.musunahi.com/), the Museum of Supernatural History. The studio plans to create a story that will "center on the curator of a covert organization known as the Museum of SuperNatural History who must seek out and protect the world's best-kept secrets."

Why not just bypass acquiring the rights to the website but create a fictional version of the same thing? One answer lies in the proliferation of reality television. People love "based on actual events," and teasing out what's real from what's not in reality shows, a challenge that's increased as the shows have become more and more scripted. Having a connection to the real world in a fictional story can ramp up an audience's level of interest if it's done right. Plus, for a movie about aliens and Loch Ness monsters, blurring the line between reality and fiction makes even more sense.

Then there's the marketing consideration. It will be much easier for DreamWorks to mobilize the Musunahi community if they don't have to convince fans the movie is relevant to them: they will already know that the movie is directly based on the museum's material.

But back to the acquisition of a website. What does it say about our culture that movies now hook us because of their things instead of people? A biography of a glamourous songstress may inspire those who want to be like her, those who want to learn about her, or those fascinated with the time period. An object can have the same effect. In the age of user-generated content, people may be more interested in seeing depictions of objects, things, sites they consume rather than a remote historical or celebrity figure.