FEATURE: The League of Extraordinary Bloggers - Assignment 6

We posted the latest assignment earlier this morning, but now here's our take!

The League of Extraordinary Bloggers?

If you're already down with The League (as ''the kids'' might say) then you can skip this but for those of you coming to the party late, The League of Extraordinary Bloggers is the brainchild of Brian at Cool and Collected. Every week Brian posts a question-cum-discussion topic and each League member posts his or her answer, along with links to three (or more) of their fellow bloggers' responses. If you'd like to join in, head over to Cool and Collected now and post a link to your contribution.

Assignment 6

So now everybody's up to speed, here's this week's assignment:

You are a big shot Hollywood movie producer with an unlimited budget. You need to assemble the ultimate ensemble cast for a movie that is sure to fill every movie theater seat around the world. Who do you hire and what kind of film are you going to make?

As this is my reply and my blog, I'm going to do something a little different. You see, as we all know movie audiences are stupid and don't like new stuff. Every ''new'' movie has to be based on something that already exists and is a recognized brand. I mean, how else are people supposed to follow what's going on in the movie they've paid to sit in front of while they text each other if it's something new or weird to them?

So with that in mind, I'm going to base my new movie on NBC's Community.

Community: The Movie

For those of you who haven't seen it, Community is an NBC sitcom in which disgraced lawyer Jeff Winger is forced to return to the world of academia when his employers discover his degree is fake. When Jeff hears that fellow student - and hot chick - Britta is struggling with her Spanish assignments, he offers his services as a personal tutor in an effort to get some alone-time with her. However, Jeff's plans are derailed when Britta invites a number other students to the study group. Jeff overcomes his initial anger to become a reluctant father-figure/mentor/leader of the study group, who, over the course of the series, grow to become friends.

Community is hot right now. The show's return last night saw four Community-related hash-tags trending worldwide on Twitter and Comedy Central has announced it will syndicate the show in 2013. So it would appear that the time is right for Community: The Movie.

Casting

With the latter part of the assignment covered, it's time to now turn our attention to our cast. Obviously, as it's a big-screen adaptation we have to replace the original cast. Joel Mcwho? Gillian what? Chevy huh? Nope. We need people who've been in movies!

Jeff Winger

Jeff Winger was born to be a lawyer. He's unscrupulous, manipulative and deceptive. But as he's also the hero of our movie, we'll have to do some re-tooling, as audiences won't know if they should like somebody with any form of moral complexity or who has layers to his character.

So in our Community: The Movie continuity Jeff Winger - who is now known as Rock Dogood, so people know he's the hero - is a crusading lawyer, fighting against EvilCorp, an electronics company whose products always seem in some way connected to the deaths of various government employees. When Rock Dogood gets too close to the truth, EvilCorp uses their special computer hacking skills to erase his academic records, resulting in Rock Dogood being disbarred. But EvilCorp didn't count on Rock Dogood's dedication. He's going to bring them down, even if it means spending four years at a Community College... In space!

In Community: The Movie, Rock Dogood is played by Taylor Lautner.

Britta Perry

Community's Britta Perry is a crusading, socially-aware political activist. At least, that's how she sees herself. In reality, despite her best intentions, she's pretty typical of the armchair anarchist, who spends much of her time discussing how terrible the world is but rarely does anything to change it. However, for our movie, that's too complex, so we're going to remove that second layer and Britta Perry - who we'll rename Constance Hotchick - is now a crusading, socially-aware political activist and leader of the Underground. Which means she wears lots of tight clothing and shoots guns in slow-motion. Because that's what strong, female characters do.

Constance Hotchick is played by Kate Beckinsale.

Pierce Hawthorne

In Community, Pierce is an out-of-touch, unintentionally racist/sexist/gayist, cantankerous curmudgeon. But he's also a very lonely, emotionally retarded man-child who, despite his social ineptitude, just wants to be loved. National Lampoons and Saturday Night Live alumnus Chevy Chase portrays Pierce with a unique combination of vulnerability and venom, with a large side of physical comedy.

Pierce is probably one of the most complex characters in the show, so clearly we'll need to remedy that. In our movie reboot, Pierce is now a wise, fatherly figure and former defense lawyer, essentially an older version of what Rock Dogood could become. His failures serve as life-lessons for Rock, who draws strength from Pierce's resolute attitude. But to avoid that becoming too heavy every scene with Pierce will feature a pratfall of some kind. And as Chevy Chase is clearly too old to be in movies, let alone in our awesome re-imagining, the role of Pierce Hawthorne will instead be played by Adam Sandler. In a fat suit.

Shirley Bennett

The TV version of Shirley Bennett is a single-mother and Christian woman who rediscovers her inner strength and independence when she and her husband divorce. Although she's a sweet, kind character, Shirley has a tough streak under her sugar-coating and she has been known to lose her composure, at which point her anger is swift.

In our adaptation, Shirley's faith will be a key part of her character, so she will now be re-imagined as Mutha Superior, a sassy, street-wise nun dedicated to bringing down EvilCorp. We also want to play-up the strong, independent woman angle, so that means she wears lots of tight clothes and shoots guns in slow motion.

Mutha Superior she will be portrayed by Beyonce Knowles.

Abed Nadir

Abed is a pop culture-obsessed geek who relates much of what he sees and experiences to movies and television, often referencing the tropes of film and shows to comic effect. It's his metatextual understanding of the events of each episode that lend the show such a quirky, unusual edge and so we'll need to remove that from the movie, so the audience don't get confused.

Also, given that Abed was raised as a Muslim and we don't want to confuse the audience by having somebody of the Islamic faith who isn't bent on the destruction of America, in our adaptation, Abed will be replaced with a wisecracking GGI-generated chimpanzee named Popsy, voiced by Robin Williams. Williams will be given free-reign during production to ad-lib his entire part on the proviso that he includes references to Twilight, The Hunger Games, Jersey Shore and The Bachelor, as we don't want to lose the pop-culture references but feel that our audience may not be familiar with Francis Ford Coppolla or Andre Gregory.

Troy Barnes

For Troy Barnes, the prospect of growing-up and facing his responsibilities as an adult is something he simply cannot face. Finding a kindred spirit in Abed, Troy desperately attempts to hold onto the last vestiges of his childhood and so together they indulge their shared love of bad movies, create their own fantasy skew on reality and generally ''have adventures.'' As we clearly don't want audiences to think the two are gay, Troy and Abed will share no screen time together.

In Community: The Movie, Troy will be known by his high school football nickname - T-Bone - and will be a rapper signed to EvilCorp's record label. T-Bone will become aware of EvilCorps's true intentions and help bring them down from within. 

T-Bone will be played by whichever rapper is available.

Annie Edison

Annie is a studious and intensely goal-oriented student whose preoccupation with her grades, rules and doing the right thing borders on the obsessive.  Always quick to help-out - especially when it means she gets to follow or make-up rules - Annie is very much the conscience of the group and will often steer them toward doing what's right.

A big part of the Community dynamic revolves around numerous will-they/won't-they relationships and this is something we'll be playing on in the movie adaptation - but with an unexpected twist. So in Community: The Movie, Annie is torn between her admiration for Constance and the dashing Rock Dogood. And as she's a strong, independent woman, Annie will wear tight clothing and shoot guns in slow motion.

Annie Edison will be played by Alison Brie. In her bra.

Dean Pelton and Ben Chang
Craig Pelton is the Dean of Greendale Community College. He's a Jeff-obsessed, cos-playing pan-sexual whose constant attempts to ''big up'' Greendale's achievements mask a feeling in inferiority, especially when compared to ''real'' colleges.

In Community: The Movie, Dean Pelton is the gay and evil (isn't that redundant?) CEO of EvilCorp and  will be played by Mark Strong.

Dean Pelton's henchman is Chang, a psychopathic serial killer and Master of the Six Palms of Death technique, a combat system known only to Chang and one other man. Who is this second Master? Audiences will find out when Chang and Rock Dogood face each other in the movie's finale.

Chang will be played by Jet Li.

Other Changes
We've already highlighted some character-based changes to Community above, but here's a few pointers as to what else the audience can expect:

• Greendale Community College is a space ship in orbit of the year 3091 AD
• The study group initially dislike each other but learn to put these differences aside, mostly thanks to their shared love of Apple products, Coca Cola, Domino's Pizza or whichever other sponsor production partner products we work with
• Taylor Swift, Ke$ha and Lady Gaga not only provided the soundtrack but also make cameo appearances
• No scene is longer than eight seconds, unless it's in slow motion
• Popsy the Pop Culture Monkey will be available to download to your Smartphone and will offer an additional audio commentary during the movie, tailored to each viewer
• The movie will be shot in 1D, as 3D is now passe
• The audience will be able to text their humorous comments and they will appear on-screen during the movie
• All scenes will be shot on green screen and another movie will be digitally composited into Community: The Movie, just in case it gets too boring
• In the future, lawyers no longer wear shirts, so Rock Dogood will remain shirtless as a sign of protest against EvilCorp for the movie's duration
• The movie's title will be changed from Community: The Movie to ''Movie,'' as we do not want to alienate any audience members unfamiliar with the source material. 
• George Lucas will be directing

Movie - Coming to theaters May 2014.

Here's what my fellow bloggers had to say:

• Ashley at My Life With Fandom went with the ultimate Space Opera
• Kevin at Team Hellions assembled a lot of independent women
• Brian at Cool and Collected took the Western Route

* And yes, there are deliberate errors in the above.