Has anyone ever written a story that became a movie without being published.

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The title is misleading. What I'm trying to ask: Have you written a story that you loved only to see it become a movie before you could publish it?

I wrote a story called Regression. I posted it in the SYW section last year. It's about a guy being reincarnated. He came back as a different man with a different family. Now there's a movie called Selfless. It has a similar plot. The difference is the MC intentionally had his conciseness transferred.

I also posted a story in the SYW last year. It was an "it narrative" in that the MC was an inanimate object which happened to be the wall. The wall also happened to care about a woman. A few months later I read a flash fiction story in Online Flash Fiction in which the main character is a wall who cares a lot about a woman.

Does anyone else experience this? Or am I going crazy?
 

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It happens all the time. Not even off-the-wall (pun intended) ideas are unique, and other writers are faster.
 

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About six months ago, I found a book on Amazon where the blurb was frighteningly similar to an idea that I'd never discussed with anyone. I mean the kind of similar that gives you that jolt like you've just been given bad news.

The book was on free at the time, so I downloaded it. Nothing at all like what I would have written.

There are only so many stories, but there are probably an infinite number of ways to write them.
 

Bergerac

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I wrote a story called Regression. I posted it in the SYW section last year. It's about a guy being reincarnated. He came back as a different man with a different family. Now there's a movie called Selfless. It has a similar plot. The difference is the MC intentionally had his conciseness transferred.

Are you worried that the screenwriters stole your idea? They didn't. The Pastor brothers (who wrote Self/Less) wrote it prior to 2012. The movie went into production in the fall of 2013, long before you posted your story. And those two certainly wouldn't be trawling the Internet for unpublished ideas to steal -- they have plenty of ideas of their own.

And the good news for you is that Self/Less has nothing to do with reincarnation -- it's about a dying billionaire who has his mind/consciousness surgically transplanted into another man's body.

However, if you are marveling that two people could have a similar idea -- it happens so often that people would be suspicious if it didn't happen, especially in the film/TV industry. It's not the idea that matters, but the execution of the idea. That's where originality takes place -- in the execution. In television especially, various shows, from Network dramas to premium cable dramas to comedies, will tackle the same storyline (i.e., idea) and the take (execution) is so different that it doesn't matter that the core idea is the same.

It's ALL in the execution. Good ideas are literally a dime a dozen.
 

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Yep. All the time. In fact, back when I had a co-author, we had to completely re-write a character in a book under contract because an author we both read published a book in our same genre that contained a secondary character who not only looked like our character AND had the same life background, but the same name! How did it happen? No idea. But when we later asked that same author, she told us it had happened to her too.

My opinion is the idea muse visits more than one house a night with the same idea. Sometimes two people remember the whispered idea the same way. :)
 
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Are you worried that the screenwriters stole your idea? They didn't. The Pastor brothers (who wrote Self/Less) wrote it prior to 2012. The movie went into production in the fall of 2013, long before you posted your story. And those two certainly wouldn't be trawling the Internet for unpublished ideas to steal -- they have plenty of ideas of their own.

And the good news for you is that Self/Less has nothing to do with reincarnation -- it's about a dying billionaire who has his mind/consciousness surgically transplanted into another man's body.

However, if you are marveling that two people could have a similar idea -- it happens so often that people would be suspicious if it didn't happen, especially in the film/TV industry. It's not the idea that matters, but the execution of the idea. That's where originality takes place -- in the execution. In television especially, various shows, from Network dramas to premium cable dramas to comedies, will tackle the same storyline (i.e., idea) and the take (execution) is so different that it doesn't matter that the core idea is the same.

It's ALL in the execution. Good ideas are literally a dime a dozen.

Yeah, I agree. I actually read a review at Rotten Tomatoes that said Self/less seems to be built on the foundation of a movie called Seconds, which came out in the 60s. A comment on the article said, "It doesn't just seem like a ripoff of Seconds, it is a ripoff of Seconds."

Does anyone here watch Futurama? You remember the episode where Fry asked the "What If Machine" about life being a video game? If you do, you'll know how extremely similar the new Pixel movie is. I find it weird, that's all. A youtube user made a video about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TanE2Si-xgw

Also, there has been cases of established authors stealing the work of lesser known individuals.

http://www.cracked.com/article_17198_5-great-men-who-built-their-careers-plagiarism.html

Fun fact: Bell didn't invent the telephone...
 
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Yep. All the time. In fact, back when I had a co-author, we had to completely re-write a character in a book under contract because an author we both read published a book in our same genre that contained a secondary character who not only looked like our character AND had the same life background, but the same name! How did it happen? No idea. But when we later asked that same author, she told us it had happened to her too.

My opinion is the idea muse visits more than one house a night with the same idea. Sometimes two people remember the whispered idea the same way. :)

It's weird isn't it? I think Newton and Leibniz created calculus at the same time 1000s of miles away from each other. They had no way of sharing notes back then.

I had a dream I was at a party in high school. The police showed up, so we all ran through the woods (I'm from Bama). A few of my friends and I tripped and fell into a creek. There was green stuff in it. We ended up having superpowers, but just screwed around with them instead of becoming superheroes.

I told myself that'd make a good story. This was years before I started writing seriously to become published. A few years later, the movie Chronicle came out.

I said, "Goddamn it."

Maybe we're pulling ideas from the akashic record (muse) like you said.

Edit:For the record, I actually don't believe in the akashic record--that's silly. That was a joke. That's something I heard on Ancient Aleins. I was validating Cathcy C's opinion while being a pretentious dbag on the sly by saying, "Hey, I know the name of that."

Dr. Shannon Robertson at Jacksonville State University read it, and talked about it in front of the class. I feel so embarrassed.
 
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About six months ago, I found a book on Amazon where the blurb was frighteningly similar to an idea that I'd never discussed with anyone. I mean the kind of similar that gives you that jolt like you've just been given bad news.

The book was on free at the time, so I downloaded it. Nothing at all like what I would have written.

There are only so many stories, but there are probably an infinite number of ways to write them.

I had a similar experience, but non of my work was involved. I was watching a Twilight Zone episode from the 60s. It's called Number 12 Looks Just Like You. I said to myself I've seen this before. I remembered reading a blurb from a book called The Uglies (I think) which basically had the same premise. But like you guys said, it's all about execution.
 

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My opinion is the idea muse visits more than one house a night with the same idea. Sometimes two people remember the whispered idea the same way. :)
That is the only theory that makes any sense whatsoever.

-Derek
 

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John Wayne's "Red River" has the same plot as "Mutiny on the Bounty." The former is a Western and the two protagonists are brothers.
"The Magnificent Seven" with Steve McQueen used the same plot as "The Seven Samauri" (with permission). Then there's the fine movie "Tampopo" which used the same plot but with seven dudes including a Tokyo truck driver who wears cowboy clothes. His truck has longhorn horns on the hood and he and six others save a woman's noodle shop, not a village. Nothing is new.
 

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Yes! (he swore, anguish dripping from his tortured voice)

It is the BANE of many a screenwriter's existence!!!
 

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I used to laugh when producers sent me a release form before they would look at a script which said, among other things, that they "may be considering similar or identical screenplays."

But then I was at the movies and saw a preview of a Hollywood film that had a very similar premise to my WIP and they showed a 30 second scene that was word for word the same as mine. I think my jaw hit the floor, particularly as no one had seen or heard about my script.

The movie flopped, but I was encouraged to discover I could write something of production standard.
 

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This frightens me to go any further with this site !!
 

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Please don't necro a thread from years ago.
 
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