The Rise & Fall of WCW examines the storied history of World Championship Wrestling, from its beginnings in the territory system through Ted Turner‘s acquisition (80s) and the savage battles with WWE for sports-entertainment domination in the 90s, with exclusive insight from the people behind the scenes and in the ring. (Length: 540 minutes)
timespace coordinates: 25 – 33 ancient Rome / Jerusalem / Ionian Sea
Ben-Hur is a 2016 American epic historical period drama film directed by Timur Bekmambetov and written by Keith Clarke and John Ridley. It is the fifth film adaptation of the 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace following the 1907 silent short film, the 1925 silent film, the Academy Award-winning 1959 film and the 2003 animated film of the same name. It has been termed a “re-adaptation”, “reimagining”, and “new interpretation” of the novel. (wiki)
spacetime coordinates: 2017 – 2019 Los Angeles
The Running Man is a 1987 American science fiction action film directed by Paul Michael Glaser and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, María Conchita Alonso, Yaphet Kotto, and Richard Dawson. It is very loosely based on the 1982 novel of the same name written by Stephen King and published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. The film’s story, set in a dystopian United States between 2017 and 2019, is about a television show called The Running Man, where convicted criminal “runners” must escape death at the hands of professional killers.
Original director Andrew Davis was fired one week into filming and replaced by Glaser. Schwarzenegger has stated this was a “terrible decision”, as Glaser “shot the movie like it was a television show, losing all the deeper themes”. (wiki)
spacetime coordinates: 1858 – 1859 Texas – Tennessee – Mississippi (Candyland plantation)
Django Unchained is a 2012 American revisionist Western film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, and Samuel L. Jackson, with Walton Goggins, Dennis Christopher, James Remar, and Don Johnson in supporting roles. Set in the Old West and Antebellum South, it is a highly stylized tribute to Spaghetti Westerns, in particular the 1966 Italian film Django by Sergio Corbucci, whose star Franco Nero has a cameo appearance.
André the Giant is a 2018 TV documentary film based on the life of French professional wrestler and actor André René Roussimoff who gained notoriety in the 1980s as André the Giant. The documentary covers André’s life with gigantism. The film features professional wrestlers and media personalities such as Vince McMahon, Hulk Hogan, Pat Patterson, Tim White, Ric Flair, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Billy Crystal as well as family members discussing André’s life.
The Obey brand icon originated from wheatpaste posters that artist Shepard Fairey created based upon a photo of André the Giant that he had found in a newspaper.
spacetime coordinates: 1868 > 1881 Arizona Territory / dying planet of Barsoom – Red Martian city of Helium, predator Walking City of Zodanga
John Carter is a 2012 American science fiction action film directed by Andrew Stanton from a screenplay written by Stanton, Mark Andrews, and Michael Chabon.
The film is largely based on A Princess of Mars (1917), the first in a series of 11 novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs to feature the interplanetary hero John Carter (and in later volumes the adventures of his children with Dejah Thoris). The story was originally serialized in six monthly installments (from February through to July 1912) in the pulp magazine The All-Story; those chapters, originally titled “Under the Moons of Mars,” were then collected in hardcover five years later from publisher A. C. McClurg.
John Carter stars Taylor Kitsch in the title role, Lynn Collins, Samantha Morton, Mark Strong, Ciarán Hinds, Dominic West, James Purefoy, and Willem Dafoe. The film chronicles the first interplanetary adventure of John Carter and his attempts to mediate civil unrest amongst the warring kingdoms of Barsoom.
Several developments on a theatrical film adaptation of the Barsoom series emerged throughout the 20th century from various major studios and producers, with the earliest attempt dating back to the 1930s. Most of these efforts, however, ultimately stalled in development hell. In the late-2000s, Walt Disney Pictures began a concerted effort to develop a film adaptation of Burroughs’ works, after a previously-abandoned venture by the studio in the 1980s. The project was driven by Stanton, who had pressed Disney to renew the screen rights from the Burroughs estate. Stanton became director in 2009; this was his live-action debut, as his previous directorial work for Disney included the Pixar animated films, Finding Nemo (2003) and WALL-E (2008).
Due to the film’s poor box office performance, Disney cancelled any plans for a sequel (titled John Carter: The Gods of Mars) and trilogy Stanton had planned.
