Netflix to abandon movie titles

Streaming behemoth Netflix is to stop giving its in house movies conventional titles.

‘We don’t need to,’ said an executive, ‘because we sell all of our movies on star power. In future, our movies will have descriptive titles like ‘Action Thriller with Sean Bean and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa’ or ‘Weepy Sob Story with Pierce Brosnan and Queen Latifah.’

‘Our subscribers know that our movie offerings are driven solely by the movie stars. We don’t care about the script, the plot, the cinematography or anything else. It’s the stars that sell the movies.  We can take any dumbass script, sign up some movie stars by waving a big cheque, and it's job done!  No offence to Thursday Murder Club, obviously.

‘Now we won’t have to think up movie titles, and we won’t need focus groups to fuss over them.

‘There is an exception to this new rule. We plan to retain conventional titles for franchise movies. We will swoop in on any half-decent franchise if the Hollywood studios show any sign of weakness. If anyone is going to do Fast and Furious 77 or Rocky 101, then it will be us. In those cases, we can dispense with the stars because the title will sell the movie.

‘Critics say that, once the stars have faded from everyone’s memory, we will end up with a back catalogue of unwatchable movies.  But we don’t care about that.  We can always rent them out to the cheapo streaming channels like U&Cry or U&MacGregor.  In the here and now, we need to sell more and more and more subscriptions until we’ve taken over the whole world, and crushed Apple TV into the dirt.’

Image: Tumisu - Pixabay

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Liam Neeson to remake Schindler’s List in Frank Drebin persona

Having proved his talent for deadpan comedy in the recent Naked Gun remake, Liam Neeson has said he would be interested in remaking his most famous film, Schindler's List, in a similar style.

A leaked early draft of the script opens with a scene in which senior Nazis gather at Wannsee near Berlin to discuss the details of the 'final solution'. Suddenly, the man serving them tea pulls off a mask and reveals himself to be Oskar Schindler, who promptly beats them all up, revealing an unexpected orange Mohican underneath Himmler's SS helmet.

His identity exposed, he decides instead to impersonate Italian diplomat Enrico Palazzo. While meeting Hitler in this disguise at the Reich Chancellery, he ends up stabbing the Japanese fighting fish presented to Hitler by Emperor Hirohito with the priceless samurai pen he also gave him.

Returning to Hitler's office that night, he attempts to search it without leaving any trace of his presence, but instead ends up destroying countless valuable looted works of art and setting the office on fire, accompanied by a comedy piano soundtrack.

Throughout the film his sidekick Goldberg keeps getting into all sorts of scrapes, at one point accidentally getting on a train heading east into Poland, though the film never quite explains what happens to him after that.

The final scene takes place at the 1936 Munich Olympics, where Schindler disguises himself as an umpire to get close enough to Hitler to assassinate him. When a friend recognises him and says he can't seriously expect to get away with it, he replies 'I am serious. And don't call me Schindler.'

Image: Wix AI was used in the making of this image

British film industry doubles down in response to Trump tariffs

The sudden shock of 100% tariffs on foreign-made films has brought a swift response from the British film industry.

A spokesman for the industry was quoted as saying “with the higher prices to show our films in the US, we’ve made the only logical response by doubling the length of our films. This will mean that American moviegoers will retain the same value per minute. Sure", he added, "it’s longer than they’re used to, but at least they’ll have enough time to actually eat their vats of popcorn”

One British film being remade in the new longer format is believed to be “Eight Weddings and Two Funerals”.

Photo by Krists Luhaers on Unsplash