So long as Mass Effect, Avatar (the James Cameron one), HTTYD and The Dragon Prince carry over in some form? I'm happy.
When you Wish Upon a Frog (Book II of the Jim Henson at Disney saga)
- Thread starter Geekhis Khan
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I am glad for all you have done @Geekhis Khan . I wish you and Mrs. Khan much happiness in whatever other future plans you take.
You may want to PM Nathanoraptor about the first one.
But wow, three years and 22 in-universe. I'm thinking back to my first suggestion to remake Gorgo given Disney owned the rights to it. Now i'm one of the guys who has helped make it the giant it is today.
Mass Effect is a bit iffy, but it could be done since Bioware is likely to make KOTOR I, though the Reapers would obviously have to be changed.
Avatar kinda depends on James Cameron but no doubt it would be different from OTL.
HTTYD and The Dragon Prince are definite no-gos, especially for the latter if Avatar: The Last Airbender is not a thing.
Cameron had the idea that became Avatar in the late 90's - however, I can imagine a lot of aspects being different. (Having said that, an Avatar equivalent with Dougal Dixon's involvement would be rad).
It is a thing, but it's going to be rather different from OTL (it's done by Bongo Studios - Bryke come up with the idea whilst working on Bartman). However, Aaron Ehasz (who's made head writer upon recommendation of Groening - because he wrote a wuxia episode of Nuclear Family called "Big Trouble In Little Chinatown") is going to end up co-creating something else after it and Bryke move on to much bigger things.
As for HTTYD, the Cressida Cowell novels miiight exist, but any adaptation of them will probably be much different to OTL.
Makes sense (and I realized from the get-go that Outer Wilds is a non-starter). Oh well...
Seeing as Project 880 was drafted in OTL '95 (based on a dream he had when he was 19), it's definitely happening in one form or another. Maybe it's tied to a Rogue Planet sequel (the alt!Deep Impact)?
Thanks again, all, and I'm curious to see where you all take things. I'll still be posting the epilogue probably through the next couple of months or so. And I'll be seeking input on the commentary thread for ideas for trends in the 2010s. Next post is tomorrow. Wonder how Bernie is doing with Jim retired? Find out tomorrow.
Thanks, TFoA. Seemed a good place to start.
Thanks.
Thanks, TML, I've appreciated your ideas and your guest writing. Glad to have you on board.
Thank you Kingfish. It's honestly makes me very happy to have inspired as much creativity as I have.
Thanks. ajm, and I appreciate the help a nd guest posts, they make a big impact in some cases.
Cheers, mate, and thanks.🥃
I have other things that I'm working on, namely an AH novel, but thanks anyway.
OK, the Main TL ending does not mean that the thread becomes a Discussion Thread. We still have a speculation & commentary thread, and we still have PMs. Please use them and stop spamming up the TL. I've still get a few weeks of Epilogue to post.
Does Meet the Feebles still get made in TTL? That is one of the most adult puppet movies ever made, IMO--I wonder what Jim Henson would have thought of it (1)...
(1) And that isn't the only weird movie Peter Jackson made--he also made another movie (Bad Taste) where a sheep is blown up by a rocket (no, really!) and a zombie movie (Braindead or Dead Alive, depending on where you saw it) where the hero chops up the zombies with a lawnmower (and there is no Gory Discretion shot at all--it's still considered one of the goriest scenes of all time). And, somehow, in OTL, the producers of the Lord of the Rings movies thought he'd be the perfect director for the trilogy (they were making it in Jackson's home country, New Zealand, which probably helped)...
(1) And that isn't the only weird movie Peter Jackson made--he also made another movie (Bad Taste) where a sheep is blown up by a rocket (no, really!) and a zombie movie (Braindead or Dead Alive, depending on where you saw it) where the hero chops up the zombies with a lawnmower (and there is no Gory Discretion shot at all--it's still considered one of the goriest scenes of all time). And, somehow, in OTL, the producers of the Lord of the Rings movies thought he'd be the perfect director for the trilogy (they were making it in Jackson's home country, New Zealand, which probably helped)...
May I suggest as soon as the epilogue ends, you close the thread? This way this thread won't be overwhelmed once it's over. Also, could people please cut their posts and paste them in the right threads now so that this could become a story-only thread please?
The discussion and speculation threads could stay open for post epilogue updates by the readers so long as it doesn't devolve into mindless spam
And threadmarks made story-only threads obsolete, so getting everybody to relocate two years’ worth of posts seems a little unnecessary.
A New Era Dawns
Chapter 17, The Last Hurrah (Cont’d)
Excerpt from Where Did I Go Right? (or: You’re No One in Hollywood Unless Someone Wants You Dead), by Bernie Brillstein (with Cheryl Henson)
So in the spring of 2001 Jim retired from Disney. It was hard to believe it was actually happening, even as we watched the Muppets play out his life and career, or at least a highly made-up version of it, laughing ourselves silly. Even as he gleefully received his roasts and accolades and gave his farewell speech. Even as he disappeared into the costume ball. Even on his last day in the office as he formally handed Lisa his gavel and walked out of the Walt Disney Building to his Kermit-Green Porsche. Even as he drove off down Dopey Drive.
I’d been the first person outside of the family that he’d told about his retirement plans. I’d known it was coming for over a year. It still seemed impossible.
Twenty-one years. From a passing thought on Jim having his own studio when Eisner rejected The Dark Crystal, through a crazy, do-or-die run on Disney that gave Jim that first bite of the Mouse, to Jim joining the company, to merging with the company, to heading the company, to gaining a majority stake in the company, I’d been there, Sancho to his Quixote, with each crazy tilt of the lance.
A kid born the day we hatched that scheme would be old enough to drink at the bar where we hatched it. And yes, it’s still open, I checked.
And now Jim was riding off into the sunset, Chairman Emeritus, “Disney Legend”, Window on Main Street, off to build a Puppetry Academy in the hills of rural New Mexico. Another insane, idiotic, sure-to-fail venture from a “Ridiculous Optimist”.
It’s guaranteed to succeed. Mark my words.
Jim was heading off on a new adventure, and for the first time in decades, I would not be at his side.
I’d been the Skeksi [SIC] to his uuRu, the Yin to his Yang, the Bastard to his Beatitude.
I still have that Skeksi bust I had made when we made our run on Disney in 1980, a celebration of our “Skeksis Holdings” shell company that I set up to cover our moves. I’m looking at it as I type these words.
God, what an ugly bastard. I love him.
In the prequel series, Cheryl based one off of me. An awful bastard that recruited Gelfling sacrifices with the promise of fame and fortune. I couldn’t be prouder.
“Hey kid, wan’na be famous? The fans will devour you!” (Image source TV Tropes)
I was incredibly tempted to quit myself and run off to New Mexico with Jim. I mean, the clear dry air would probably be better for my smoke-ravaged lungs, but I know me too well. I’d be bored out of my fucking mind. Jim can live in an adobe hut on a dusty hilltop where silence reigns. Not me. I need the noise, the lights, the motion, and the stench of LA.
No, I’d still be at Disney for another couple of years, training up Garth Ancier to be my replacement at NBC while Jamie Kellner backfilled his position and getting Mike Lynton spun up at MGM. It was job enough, not because they were difficult to spin up, but because there was so much to the job.
Michael Lynton, Chairman/CEO of Disney-MGM Studios (Image ©AP, source Fierce Video)
Garth and Jamie I’ve talked about, but Mike was new, having come in to replace Tom when Tom took over for Dick when Dick retired in ‘99. Mike’s a very interesting bloke with a wry and dry sense of humor. London born, Harvard Grad, former investment banker who quit because he got bored, worked at Hollywood Pictures before leaving that when it got “noxious and bureaucratic”, becoming the first President of Penguin Pictures. His resume speaks for itself in some ways.
But under it all he’s a real free-wheeling guy, always looking for a job that keeps surprising him. “I didn’t leave jobs,” he told me, “I went to more interesting ones.”
Well, brother, you don’t get any more “interesting” than Jim’s Disney.
Mike’s also happy to do the less glamorous, but important jobs and let others get on with their jobs, but he will step in and make a big decision when he has to, “a bias to action”, as he puts it (he’d rather do something and be dragged to hell kicking all the way than do nothing and watch as things go to hell around him)[1].
Already they’re calling him the “Jolly Giant”, more for his facial features than his height, I think.
All in all, a great new Head Lunatic for this Asylum. MGM is in good hands.
But my biggest job before I retired would be spinning up Jim’s daughter Lisa as Chairwoman. I’d known Lisa since she was a child and was practically her obnoxious uncle from New York. I’m pretty sure I inadvertently taught her the F-word at some point. If not me, then Frank Oz.
Lisa c.2010 (Image source Ms. Magazine)
Some folks in the press were hard on the decision to hire Lisa. Some asshole from Forbes even dismissively called her “Disney’s Princess”. But Wall Street had no issues. Stocks actually went up following the announcement. Cry “nepotism” all you want: she turned Fox Studios from the “kid’s department” at Triad, 20th Century’s cast-off, into a major player. It was a no-brainer.
So I took particular joy in showing her the Disney Campus, much as Roy had showed it to Jim and me back in 1980. And boy had things changed since then! No more “sleepy little lot” where the offices were empty and the ball fields full. It was like Universal and Warner back in the day: constant action, people everywhere, crew moving sets, caterers, actors in costume, endless noise, tour trams full of visitors.
I showed her it all, and gave her the full history. “That’s the new Roy Disney building. The old one was hideous. See that one? Restored inside and out. See that? That was a moldering old Zorro set when we got here. We made it Sound Stage Four.”
But I made sure to swing her by one old side building by the employee’s entrance, just so that I could show her one of her father’s proudest, most beloved early business decisions. “See that blank spot on the wall? That’s where the hated Punch Clock was.”
“Yes,” she said with a nod and a smile, arms crossed. “I remember him bragging about that one. The ‘hated employee’ who was ‘hurting morale’. Pure dad.”
“You lead like that, and you’ll rule this castle.”
“I’ll lead in my own way, Bernie, but dad’s spirit will be with me.”
“Hail to the Queen!” I told her, patting her on the back.
But once the tour was over, and I delivered her to the Round Table, she thanked me and began to have a long talk with Mike and Garth and new CCO Joe Ranft about how Marvel TV and Movies would crossover. I was there, and they’d ask my opinions, but I was not central to the conversation. I was on the side. And at that moment I knew that I was no longer at the center of the action. I was still officially Chairman of Disney-NBC, but already Garth was the Future and I was the Past.
I felt like a dinosaur watching the mammals make plans while the comet came streaking across the sky.
[1] Hat-tip to @El Pip for the insights on Lynton. Stole some of his text fair and square too.
Excerpt from Where Did I Go Right? (or: You’re No One in Hollywood Unless Someone Wants You Dead), by Bernie Brillstein (with Cheryl Henson)
So in the spring of 2001 Jim retired from Disney. It was hard to believe it was actually happening, even as we watched the Muppets play out his life and career, or at least a highly made-up version of it, laughing ourselves silly. Even as he gleefully received his roasts and accolades and gave his farewell speech. Even as he disappeared into the costume ball. Even on his last day in the office as he formally handed Lisa his gavel and walked out of the Walt Disney Building to his Kermit-Green Porsche. Even as he drove off down Dopey Drive.
I’d been the first person outside of the family that he’d told about his retirement plans. I’d known it was coming for over a year. It still seemed impossible.
Twenty-one years. From a passing thought on Jim having his own studio when Eisner rejected The Dark Crystal, through a crazy, do-or-die run on Disney that gave Jim that first bite of the Mouse, to Jim joining the company, to merging with the company, to heading the company, to gaining a majority stake in the company, I’d been there, Sancho to his Quixote, with each crazy tilt of the lance.
A kid born the day we hatched that scheme would be old enough to drink at the bar where we hatched it. And yes, it’s still open, I checked.
And now Jim was riding off into the sunset, Chairman Emeritus, “Disney Legend”, Window on Main Street, off to build a Puppetry Academy in the hills of rural New Mexico. Another insane, idiotic, sure-to-fail venture from a “Ridiculous Optimist”.
It’s guaranteed to succeed. Mark my words.
Jim was heading off on a new adventure, and for the first time in decades, I would not be at his side.
I’d been the Skeksi [SIC] to his uuRu, the Yin to his Yang, the Bastard to his Beatitude.
I still have that Skeksi bust I had made when we made our run on Disney in 1980, a celebration of our “Skeksis Holdings” shell company that I set up to cover our moves. I’m looking at it as I type these words.
God, what an ugly bastard. I love him.
In the prequel series, Cheryl based one off of me. An awful bastard that recruited Gelfling sacrifices with the promise of fame and fortune. I couldn’t be prouder.
“Hey kid, wan’na be famous? The fans will devour you!” (Image source TV Tropes)
I was incredibly tempted to quit myself and run off to New Mexico with Jim. I mean, the clear dry air would probably be better for my smoke-ravaged lungs, but I know me too well. I’d be bored out of my fucking mind. Jim can live in an adobe hut on a dusty hilltop where silence reigns. Not me. I need the noise, the lights, the motion, and the stench of LA.
No, I’d still be at Disney for another couple of years, training up Garth Ancier to be my replacement at NBC while Jamie Kellner backfilled his position and getting Mike Lynton spun up at MGM. It was job enough, not because they were difficult to spin up, but because there was so much to the job.
Michael Lynton, Chairman/CEO of Disney-MGM Studios (Image ©AP, source Fierce Video)
Garth and Jamie I’ve talked about, but Mike was new, having come in to replace Tom when Tom took over for Dick when Dick retired in ‘99. Mike’s a very interesting bloke with a wry and dry sense of humor. London born, Harvard Grad, former investment banker who quit because he got bored, worked at Hollywood Pictures before leaving that when it got “noxious and bureaucratic”, becoming the first President of Penguin Pictures. His resume speaks for itself in some ways.
But under it all he’s a real free-wheeling guy, always looking for a job that keeps surprising him. “I didn’t leave jobs,” he told me, “I went to more interesting ones.”
Well, brother, you don’t get any more “interesting” than Jim’s Disney.
Mike’s also happy to do the less glamorous, but important jobs and let others get on with their jobs, but he will step in and make a big decision when he has to, “a bias to action”, as he puts it (he’d rather do something and be dragged to hell kicking all the way than do nothing and watch as things go to hell around him)[1].
Already they’re calling him the “Jolly Giant”, more for his facial features than his height, I think.
All in all, a great new Head Lunatic for this Asylum. MGM is in good hands.
But my biggest job before I retired would be spinning up Jim’s daughter Lisa as Chairwoman. I’d known Lisa since she was a child and was practically her obnoxious uncle from New York. I’m pretty sure I inadvertently taught her the F-word at some point. If not me, then Frank Oz.
Lisa c.2010 (Image source Ms. Magazine)
Some folks in the press were hard on the decision to hire Lisa. Some asshole from Forbes even dismissively called her “Disney’s Princess”. But Wall Street had no issues. Stocks actually went up following the announcement. Cry “nepotism” all you want: she turned Fox Studios from the “kid’s department” at Triad, 20th Century’s cast-off, into a major player. It was a no-brainer.
So I took particular joy in showing her the Disney Campus, much as Roy had showed it to Jim and me back in 1980. And boy had things changed since then! No more “sleepy little lot” where the offices were empty and the ball fields full. It was like Universal and Warner back in the day: constant action, people everywhere, crew moving sets, caterers, actors in costume, endless noise, tour trams full of visitors.
I showed her it all, and gave her the full history. “That’s the new Roy Disney building. The old one was hideous. See that one? Restored inside and out. See that? That was a moldering old Zorro set when we got here. We made it Sound Stage Four.”
But I made sure to swing her by one old side building by the employee’s entrance, just so that I could show her one of her father’s proudest, most beloved early business decisions. “See that blank spot on the wall? That’s where the hated Punch Clock was.”
“Yes,” she said with a nod and a smile, arms crossed. “I remember him bragging about that one. The ‘hated employee’ who was ‘hurting morale’. Pure dad.”
“You lead like that, and you’ll rule this castle.”
“I’ll lead in my own way, Bernie, but dad’s spirit will be with me.”
“Hail to the Queen!” I told her, patting her on the back.
But once the tour was over, and I delivered her to the Round Table, she thanked me and began to have a long talk with Mike and Garth and new CCO Joe Ranft about how Marvel TV and Movies would crossover. I was there, and they’d ask my opinions, but I was not central to the conversation. I was on the side. And at that moment I knew that I was no longer at the center of the action. I was still officially Chairman of Disney-NBC, but already Garth was the Future and I was the Past.
I felt like a dinosaur watching the mammals make plans while the comet came streaking across the sky.
[1] Hat-tip to @El Pip for the insights on Lynton. Stole some of his text fair and square too.
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My goodness that's a memeable chin. I know a bit-part actor who could stunt double for him.
. Very touching moment over with Brillstein here reflecting on his time with JimDubya has a spot on the board, but other than that he’s not actually in charge of anything.
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