Dallas movie rewritten to be a comedy

The long awaited, highly publicized, cast and recast movie Dallas has a new script, Dallas will now be a comedy. The good folks over at moviehole.net let us know about this:

According to Starpulse and Dark Horizons, the “Dallas” film is still happening: but it’s going to be a mere shade on the film that was set to get up this year; and didn’t.

Not only has the film’s mega-star cast been dumped (including Shirley MacLaine and Jennifer Lopez), but Robert Harling’s script has also been put through the paper shredder. Because it was the best element of the whole project, that wile evoke many an ‘eh?’

Apparently, “Dallas” is going to get an overhaul – a “Bewitched” like overhaul, meaning that the film will now be an out-and-out comedy that will go the ‘show within a show’ route that the Will Ferrell/Nicole Kidman dud so fruitlessly utilised.

The New York Post said that the original script was an amazing drama but it was dropped because a focus group liked the idea of a comedy better.

This sort of news just kills me. Executives should stay out of the creative process. They may know about money but focus groups should not be brought in for a film before it is even filming. I can understand people being shown different cuts of a movie but to change a film so drastically, to throw out a good script because of what some people who had nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon said is an insult to the creative people involved in that project.

When you try to please everyone you usually end up pleasing no one. More people like comedies than dramas, it’s true but if everyone just made comedies then they would soon loose their appeal. I am completely uninterested in Dallas now. The only originally cast person still in the movie is John Travolta and that certainly is not enough to make me watch a lukewarm, focused grouped, middle of the road comedy.

I don’t even want to know who shot JR.