If you're interested in what happens behind the scenes in the movie business, you may want to follow the current juicy court case between novelist Clive Cussler and Crusader Entertainment. The gist of it is that the sides are suing each other over the flop feature film, "Sahara." Cussler claims that the company promised him approval of all elements of the film and then cut him out of the process, while Crusader claims he was a control freak who overstated the size of his fan base and then bad-mouthed the finished picture and thereby hurt its takings.
All kind of fun facts are coming out, including that there were 10 writers on the project, for a total writing budget of over $3 million. Apparently none of them delivered a script Cussler liked, so he decided to try writing the script himself. Now screenwriting guru Robert McKee has testified on behalf of Crusader, about Cussler's script. Part of what he said:
“The writing is very bad. How bad? I have thought of phrases like ’seriously flawed’ [or] ‘fatally flawed.’ But it is beyond all of that, because when something is flawed there is an implication that something else about it is good… On average, there is something unbelievable happening every two minutes.”
Something unbelievable happening every two minutes? Sounds like a hit to me...
I haven't provided a link because the story is updating every day--if you Google "Cussler Saraha Lawsuit" you should find the latest. It's much more entertaining than the film.