‘Tis the season to see Tom Cruise, Matt Damon, Daniel Craig, Robert Downey Jr. ‘Tis also the season to review the typeset version of my new book.
And as I juxtapose the two, I am staggered how many tech themes Hollywood could weave blockbusters around. Here’s 10 to start with:
a) The New New Thing
Think of the drama around the Apple iCloud launch – the race with Google and Amazon around cloud music, the massive data center which was kept hidden even on Google Earth till a few days prior. The iPhone 4 – the misplaced prototype and Apple’s disclosure of its 16 anechoic testing chambers each costing over $ 1 million each after its well publicized antenna issues. Can you imagine the suspense Hollywood could produce around each product launch?
b) Jobs, Bezos, Page
Justin Timberlake is itching to play someone meatier than Sean Parker. Ben Kingsley did Gandhi 15 years ago. Come on, Hollywood – so many tech titans waiting to be profiled. And like Madonna and Pele they have highly recognizable single names.
c) Conflict Minerals
if you thought Blood Diamond was heart wrenching, imagine what a movie about the current conflicts in the Congo around tantalum, tin, tungsten and other minerals indispensable for consumer electronics would be like.
c) Mongolian Grill
Imagine the high-level stakes Hollywood could vividly portray as China reduces its supplies and US and other mining firms ramp up production of neodymium, terbium, yttrium and other rare earths critical for cleantech.
e) Move over Gekko!
Wall Street has nothing on the lawyers on all sides of Google in its Android and other legal battles. Especially when you throw in a bit of Steve Jobs “willing to go thermonuclear war” about Android.
f) Shall we play a game?
Thermonuclear war is so 80s. in 2007, the whole country of Estonia was brought to its knees for several days in a cyber attack widely speculated to have originated in Russia. Web War One, and many more sophisticated attacks later there is plenty of more contemporary WarGames material.
g) The Sting II
OK, so Sony Pictures would likely not finance it, but the repeated hacks against the PS3 and LulzSec and Anonymous hacks against so many corporations would be great fodder for thrillers.
h) Silicon Empire
Come on, have we not had too many gangster TV series? How about one around the ups and downs at HP. Think about it – every human interest and gossip angle could be covered in a series.
i) The Big Bang ecosystem
Why only one nerdy show about physicists? How about a show with entrepreneurs who write Apple, Android and Blackberry apps and about their neighbors who work for Indian, E. European and Costa Rican offshore firms? Think of the “enterprise tech sucks” jokes and “but it pays for expensive vacations” repartees in all those accents. Oh, and “Blackberry sucks” jokes too:)
j) The TAF – Technologically Advanced Family
A series about a modern family with way too many iDevices, blogs, apps for everything, soccer games and birthdays all synched. mobile pays for latte, Netflix jokes. Imagine the Christmas tree episode. Imagine a road trip without the bag with the power chargers!
Note to Hollywood: My book has serious descriptions of each of these 10 themes . But if you promise you will pay for “expensive vacations” I can easily develop some interesting movie or TV scripts :)
