An Alternate Rise of the Blockbuster

I hope we will see some more from this Timeline!

Lots of films left to see how the differ in this world!

Personally I'd like to see Raise the Titanic moved from spectacular flop to being Cameron's masterpiece!
 
If I could get permission I would love to give it a shot. I never tried to write anything this complex though so quality may not be the same.
 
If I could get permission I would love to give it a shot. I never tried to write anything this complex though so quality may not be the same.

i'd maybe start a new thread with a different name, and just use this as a heavy inspiration... giving credit to it as such of course.
 
i'd maybe start a new thread with a different name, and just use this as a heavy inspiration... giving credit to it as such of course.
To be honest I really can't be bothered continuing this, and I'd really rather no one add to this thread -- but if you want to do your own version then feel free.
 
A few features from future updates that I was planning, way back when:

-- Bruce Willis stars in a big-budget film adaption of Stephen King's It. EDIT: Still with Tim Curry as Pennywise.
-- A Lost in Space revival movie is made and released in 1990, in time for the TV series' 25th anniversary. Bill Mumy co-produces, and all the surviving original cast return -- however, the script had to be hastily rewritten after Guy Williams's death. The tone of the film is significantly more serious than the series. It is polarising, and not a flop but not too successful either.
-- The Star Wars -- Chapter VII: Triumph of the Rebellion stars LeVar Burton and Jamie Lee Curtis as its two main leads, with Bill Mumy making a cameo as Luke and Carrie Fisher being entirely absent. (River and Joaquin Phoenix both also make cameos reprising their roles from Chapter IV, now as Luke's pupils in a fledgling Jedi academy.) The plot is almost entirely unconcerned with the Force, though, and basically all about the fall of the Empire and re-establishment of the Republica Galactica. The movie does respectably well, and Anthony Hopkins impresses everybody as the Emperor again.
-- X-Men film in 1989. Patrick Stewart plays Professor Xavier, still. The lead character is Cyclops, played by Mel Gibson.
-- An Avengers movie (called "Captain America and the Avengers") is planned for the early 1990s but dies in development hell.
-- A Wonder Woman movie is finally made in 1994 with Famke Janssen in the lead role, and even though it's a good movie it comes right at the tail end of the superhero craze and isn't too successful.
-- Around the same time, a planned revival of the Superman film series is prevented by the guys who they sold the film rights to basically doing what Roger Corman did with Fantastic Four: making a cheap-as-shit movie never intended for release just before the rights were set to revert back to Warner Bros.
-- An ATL equivalent of Silence of the Lambs is adapted to film, with Marc Alaimo as Hannibal Lecter.
-- Francis Ford Coppola still makes a Dracula adaptation, but with Cary Elwes as Jonathan Harker.
-- If the 1980s "thing" was superheroes, the 1990s "thing" is historical films or fictional period pieces. I thought up a list of such movies which I can't remember, but one of them would be a Civil War epic starring Robert Foxworth as General Ulysses S Grant.
-- When the James Bond film series is revived by Columbia Pictures, it is as a period-piece film series with every film set in some undetermined time in the late-50s-early-60s. The gadgets become sort of retro-futuristic.
-- Highlander II, released 1989, turns out really good. A third movie is also made, released 1992: it is a prequel of sorts, set entirely in the past (in the 17th century, about 100 years after the flashback events of the original). Its plot also ties into that of the first episode of the Highlander TV series (which is more explicitly an entirely different incarnation of the concept, as it plainly contradicts the first two movies) -- there's some ambiguity about whether the third film fits in the film continuity, the TV series continuity, or both.
-- The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones is a TV show that runs for three seasons, 1992-1995.
-- PAX is a solid success and lasts for nine seasons in total, 1987-1996. The final season "shakes up the formula" by having full-scale war finally break out between Arcadia and the Judge's nation (whose name I can't remember right now). Arcadia wins of course.
-- Speaking of PAX, I had a really nice idea for their tribute to Gene Roddenberry upon his death. Roddenberry dies at the beginning of the fifth season's mid-season hiatus, and so the first episode back in January 1992 has some added scenes. At the beginning, Dylan's team discover the only known remaining preserved copies of the music of the Beatles (including their solo work). Then the end of the episode has George Lagrange playing "Imagine" on his piano, over a montage comparing and contrasting how the civilisations of Earth are living up to the message of the song. This fades out to a simple dedication: "For Gene".
-- Three and a half years later, this is referenced back to by the eighth season finale where war is declared. Over a montage of nations preparing for war, George Lagrange plays "Let it Be".
-- Red Dwarf has an original run of five series, 1988-1992. The American version is successfully picked up in its second incarnation; Robert Llewellyn has cold feet and pulls out, so they recast Kryten with... shit, I can't remember, but it was a black male actor and they changed him to a proper science mechanoid rather than a butler and they also made him have a helmet rather than a full-face mask. Peter DeLuise plays Lister (I actually think he'd be the ideal American Lister for the time), Chris Eigeman plays Rimmer (he stays on for the second pilot due to his rapport with DeLuise), Jane Leeves plays Holly and Terry Farrell plays the Cat. The American show lasts four seasons; Rob Grant and Doug Naylor stay on as showrunners for the first season before leaving, after which they are replaced in that capacity by Ira Behr. The UK version is then revived by Naylor for three more series. A (British) film version then follows: the leads are recast (Naylor is more comfortable with recasting as he knows it can work), and among the new actors is Chloe Annett as Kochanski.
-- Kelsey Grammer dies of a drug overdose in the hiatus between seasons 7 and 8 of Cheers. The characters of Frasier and Lilith are written out, with the explanation they've moved away to better-paying jobs (though Lilith reappears twice, including once via a phone conversation to say she had a baby boy). When Cheers ends, a spinoff series is created called Cliff starring John Ratzenberger as Cliff Clavin (with the character having moved to Florida).
-- The Babel Project, the ATL equivalent of Babylon 5, is sold to Paramount in 1991 and begins airing in September 1993. The original cast include Avery Brooks as Commander Jeffrey Sinclair, Rosalind Chao as First Officer Laurel Chang, Frank Sivero as Security Chief Michael Garibaldi, Gary Graham as Dr Benjamin Kyle, Peter Jurasik as Centauri Ambassador Londo Mollari, Andreas Katsulas as Narn Ambassador Ja'Karr, and Robin Curtis as Minbari Ambassador Delenn. Delenn is male for the first season of the show and changes to female in the chrysalis; Curtis's androgynous name means that they are able to successfully keep the whole thing under wraps and surprise the audience. There are cast changes that for the most part mirror OTL. The whole thing lasts five seasons.
-- Star Trek is revived as a big-budget film series around the turn of the millennium, with Ethan Hawke starring as Captain Kirk.

And some political things:
-- For reasons I've seeded throughout the TL already, Iran-Contra blows up in Reagan's face a lot worse. Mario Cuomo runs for President in 1988 with Dick Gephardt as his running mate; they defeat the Republican ticket of Bob Dole / Dan Quayle in landslide
-- In 1990, Congressman Jack Kemp runs for Governor of New York against Stan Lundine and wins. Also, the Republicans take control of the House of Representatives.
-- Come 1992, Cuomo's popularity is way down but the Democrats are able to gleefully say "The last two Republicans you elected were crooks!" So the Republicans rally around a candidate with firm conservative credentials and a strong record of being tough on crime: Missouri Governor John Ashcroft. And his running mate: Wyoming Congressman Dick Cheney. Meanwhile, Ross Perot also makes a strong third-party challenge. The final popular vote distribution is about 40-35-25 in the order Cuomo-Ashcroft-Perot, and Cuomo wins reelection with a narrow electoral-college victory that most (probably correctly) attribute to Perot's spoiler effect. (Perot only wins one state: Maine.)
-- In 1996, the Republicans run Governor Jack Kemp while the Democrats have a messed-up primary that throws up Vice President Gephardt as the nominee. Kemp wins in landslide.
EDIT: Forgot to add this: I would've referenced this in a post about the 1988 election, but the 1984 election in TTL is Reagan vs Hart and it's a Republican victory on the scale of OTL's Bush-vs-Dukakis rather than OTL's Nixon-vs-McGovern.

So, yeah, that's most of it. Some stuff has more detail (like the plot of Highlander II) but that's the summary.
 
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A few features from future updates that I was planning, way back when:

-- Bruce Willis stars in a big-budget film adaption of Stephen King's It.
-- A Lost in Space revival movie is made and released in 1990, in time for the TV series' 25th anniversary. Bill Mumy co-produces, and all the surviving original cast return -- however, the script had to be hastily rewritten after Guy Williams's death. The tone of the film is significantly more serious than the series. It is polarising, and not a flop but not too successful either.
-- The Star Wars -- Chapter VII: Triumph of the Rebellion stars LeVar Burton and Jamie Lee Curtis as its two main leads, with Bill Mumy making a cameo as Luke and Carrie Fisher being entirely absent. (River and Joaquin Phoenix both also make cameos reprising their roles from Chapter IV, now as Luke's pupils in a fledgling Jedi academy.) The plot is almost entirely unconcerned with the Force, though, and basically all about the fall of the Empire and re-establishment of the Republica Galactica. The movie does respectably well, and Anthony Hopkins impresses everybody as the Emperor again.
-- X-Men film in 1989. Patrick Stewart plays Professor Xavier, still. The lead character is Cyclops, played by Mel Gibson.
-- An Avengers movie (called "Captain America and the Avengers") is planned for the early 1990s but dies in development hell.
-- A Wonder Woman movie is finally made in 1994 with Famke Janssen in the lead role, and even though it's a good movie it comes right at the tail end of the superhero craze and isn't too successful.
-- Around the same time, a planned revival of the Superman film series is prevented by the guys who they sold the film rights to basically doing what Roger Corman did with Fantastic Four: making a cheap-as-shit movie never intended for release just before the rights were set to revert back to Warner Bros.
-- An ATL equivalent of Silence of the Lambs is adapted to film, with Marc Alaimo as Hannibal Lecter.
-- Francis Ford Coppola still makes a Dracula adaptation, but with Cary Elwes as Jonathan Harker.
-- If the 1980s "thing" was superheroes, the 1990s "thing" is historical films or fictional period pieces. I thought up a list of such movies which I can't remember, but one of them would be a Civil War epic starring Robert Foxworth as General Ulysses S Grant.
-- When the James Bond film series is revived by Columbia Pictures, it is as a period-piece film series with every film set in some undetermined time in the late-50s-early-60s. The gadgets become sort of retro-futuristic.
-- Highlander II, released 1989, turns out really good. A third movie is also made, released 1992: it is a prequel of sorts, set entirely in the past (in the 17th century, about 100 years after the flashback events of the original). Its plot also ties into that of the first episode of the Highlander TV series (which is more explicitly an entirely different incarnation of the concept, as it plainly contradicts the first two movies) -- there's some ambiguity about whether the third film fits in the film continuity, the TV series continuity, or both.
-- The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones is a TV show that runs for three seasons, 1992-1995.
-- PAX is a solid success and lasts for nine seasons in total, 1987-1996. The final season "shakes up the formula" by having full-scale war finally break out between Arcadia and the Judge's nation (whose name I can't remember right now). Arcadia wins of course.
-- Speaking of PAX, I had a really nice idea for their tribute to Gene Roddenberry upon his death. Roddenberry dies at the beginning of the fifth season's mid-season hiatus, and so the first episode back in January 1992 has some added scenes. At the beginning, Dylan's team discover the only known remaining preserved copies of the music of the Beatles (including their solo work). Then the end of the episode has George Lagrange playing "Imagine" on his piano, over a montage comparing and contrasting how the civilisations of Earth are living up to the message of the song. This fades out to a simple dedication: "For Gene".
-- Three and a half years later, this is referenced back to by the eighth season finale where war is declared. Over a montage of nations preparing for war, George Lagrange plays "Let it Be".
-- Red Dwarf has an original run of five series, 1988-1992. The American version is successfully picked up in its second incarnation; Robert Llewellyn has cold feet and pulls out, so they recast Kryten with... shit, I can't remember, but it was a black male actor and they changed him to a proper science mechanoid rather than a butler and they also made him have a helmet rather than a full-face mask. Peter DeLuise plays Lister (I actually think he'd be the ideal American Lister for the time), Chris Eigeman plays Rimmer (he stays on for the second pilot due to his rapport with DeLuise), Jane Leeves plays Holly and Terry Farrell plays the Cat. The American show lasts four seasons; Rob Grant and Doug Naylor stay on as showrunners for the first season before leaving, after which they are replaced in that capacity by Ira Behr. The UK version is then revived by Naylor for three more series. A (British) film version then follows: the leads are recast (Naylor is more comfortable with recasting as he knows it can work), and among the new actors is Chloe Annett as Kochanski.
-- Kelsey Grammer dies of a drug overdose in the hiatus between seasons 7 and 8 of Cheers. The characters of Frasier and Lilith are written out, with the explanation they've moved away to better-paying jobs (though Lilith reappears twice, including once via a phone conversation to say she had a baby boy). When Cheers ends, a spinoff series is created called Cliff starring John Ratzenberger as Cliff Clavin (with the character having moved to Florida).
-- The Babel Project, the ATL equivalent of Babylon 5, is sold to Paramount in 1991 and begins airing in September 1993. The original cast include Avery Brooks as Commander Jeffrey Sinclair, Rosalind Chao as First Officer Laurel Chang, Frank Sivero as Security Chief Michael Garibaldi, Gary Graham as Dr Benjamin Kyle, Peter Jurasik as Centauri Ambassador Londo Mollari, Andreas Katsulas as Narn Ambassador Ja'Karr, and Robin Curtis as Minbari Ambassador Delenn. Delenn is male for the first season of the show and changes to female in the chrysalis; Curtis's androgynous name means that they are able to successfully keep the whole thing under wraps and surprise the audience. There are cast changes that for the most part mirror OTL. The whole thing lasts five seasons.
-- Star Trek is revived as a big-budget film series around the turn of the millennium, with Ethan Hawke starring as Captain Kirk.

And some political things:
-- For reasons I've seeded throughout the TL already, Iran-Contra blows up in Reagan's face a lot worse. Mario Cuomo runs for President in 1988 with Dick Gephardt as his running mate; they defeat the Republican ticket of Bob Dole / Dan Quayle in landslide
-- In 1990, Congressman Jack Kemp runs for Governor of New York against Stan Lundine and wins. Also, the Republicans take control of the House of Representatives.
-- Come 1992, Cuomo's popularity is way down but the Democrats are able to gleefully say "The last two Republicans you elected were crooks!" So the Republicans rally around a candidate with firm conservative credentials and a strong record of being tough on crime: Missouri Governor John Ashcroft. And his running mate: Wyoming Congressman Dick Cheney. Meanwhile, Ross Perot also makes a strong third-party challenge. The final popular vote distribution is about 40-35-25 in the order Cuomo-Ashcroft-Perot, and Cuomo wins reelection with a narrow electoral-college victory that most (probably correctly) attribute to Perot's spoiler effect. (Perot only wins one state: Maine.)
-- In 1996, the Republicans run Governor Jack Kemp while the Democrats have a messed-up primary that throws up Vice President Gephardt as the nominee. Kemp wins in landslide.

So, yeah, that's most of it. Some stuff has more detail (like the plot of Highlander II) but that's the summary.
Would be good ideas for the new version.
 
It would be interesting to see how It would turn out. I think the only way a feature film adaption of the book would work is if it is adapted into two movies. There is too much going on in the story to fit into one feature film.
 
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