Hollywood is a funny place. Sometimes we wait for years for a genuinely unique project to come down the pike, one with an idea so strange and compelling we’re glad we put to rest that slightly kooky plan to devastate the whole place with a thermonuclear bomb bought from Farsi-tongued terrorists (not that I’ve done such a thing in the past month). And sometimes we get TWO of that project; at least, two that sound suspiciously similar. (killer volcanoes! killer asteroids! killer Capote’s!)
That’s the case with the announcement in today’s Variety that Universal Pictures is developing their very own organ-repossession thriller – even though it’s widely known that Darren Lynn Bousman has the kidney-stealing musical REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA in the works with his homeboys over at Twisted Pictures. THE REPOSSESSION MAMBO (saucy dancing instead of singing?) will star Jude Law and Forest Whitaker and be directed by newcomer Miguel Sapochnik, takes place in a future where artificial organs can be bought on credit (always a good idea) with the understanding that defaulting on a payment will result in a hasty – and presumably gooey – repossession.
I love the idea – there’s something about stupidly defaulting on your payment for your f*ckin INTERNAL ORGAN and having it sliced out of you – it just makes me chuckle like a toothless hillbilly.
As for the similarities between the two projects, Bousman isn’t concerned, as he relays on his Myspace page: “From the couple of tag lines I have just read on ‘THE REPOSSESSION MAMBO’ it doesn’t appear to really concern me… It would be like trying to compare THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST to JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR… Sure they’re both movies about Jesus – – – but one of them Jesus breaks out into song and dance – the other he, well… doesn’t…”
Below: actual footage of a “kidney-jacking.”
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