In the classic science-fiction spoof ‘Spaceballs’, one of the recurring jokes is the hypercommercialization of the Spaceballs movie itself, and the bewildering variety of (sometimes just plain bewildering) merchandise that, allegedly, one could purchase related the film.

(This is pretty obviously a poke in the ribs at ‘Star Wars’ which really did break all sorts of boundaries in the sheer variety of swag it had for sale. There was even Ewok soap. Seriously… I won a bar of it as a prize at Atomic Age Cinema way back when.)

However, even Yogurt, the Yoda (duh) figure played by Brooks himself in ‘Spaceballs’, would have been impressed with the notion of making an entire movie out of a commercial that had been used to sell a basically unrelated property:

Dead Island is a pretty mediocre zombie game. The console version currently holds a 71 rating on Metacritic and has already prompted videogame essayist Tom Bissell to draft a Why-Videogames-Suck-Now mini-manifesto over at Grantland. It’s especially disappointing since Island had such a dynamite trailer — you might remember it from back in February. Lionsgate has officially optioned the Dead Island film rights, and curiously, a press release from the studio mostly just talks about that preview …

But it gets more interesting: The press release also indicates that “the trailer will serve as [the movie's] primary creative inspiration,” noting that the Dead Island movie will “focus on human emotion, family ties and non-linear storytelling.”

…

We’ve seen movies based on action figures, board games, and public-domain fairy tales, but this seems like the potential start of an entirely new trend: Movies based on commercials.

Yes, we’ve come a long way as a culture, when a misleading-to-the-point-of-dishonesty trailer for a videogame can spawn an entire movie based around the game that people *wish* they had been able to purchase in the first place.

Oh, and that movie will no doubt still be viciously Living Supremacist.

Our work here at the ZRC is never done.

Tags: Advertising, Movies, Videogames

This entry was posted by John Sears on Friday, September 30th, 2011 at 8:20 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.