Just revisiting this old story in the light of continuing 'controversy' about one of the Producers who acquired it. The first planned Director moved on (good for him!), but the script is still 'out there' with the likely producer. The script is thoroughly unpleasant, and highlights the allegations against Michael.
Firstly about the acquisition:
Spec Spotlight: Isaac Adamson Talks “Bubbles”
Jul 19, 2016 | Industry
Isaac Adamson felt he had a toehold in the film industry when his first novel, Tokyo Suckerpunch, was optioned in 2000—but his spec script Bubbles launched him to a whole new level. Here’s his story.
Growing up in Fort Collins, Colorado, Adamson studied film at the University of Colorado at Boulder but soon learned he preferred writing fiction. “I was an awful cinematographer—nothing I shot ever looked the way I wanted—and I learned pretty quickly that while re-shooting a terrible scene cost a pretty penny, rewriting a terrible sentence is free,” he said.
The optioning of Tokyo Suckerpunch—a detective story blending martial arts, gangsters, geishas, and Japanese pop culture—demystified the screenwriting process as Adamson saw the scripts generated during development. After crafting the time-bending thriller, Complication, published in 2012, he wrote his first script, a caper about bumbling criminals accidentally killing Chicago’s mayor. It’s still in the “metaphorical drawer,” but writing it forced him to learn screenwriting, and gave him confidence.
“I’ve been concentrating on screenwriting for about the last three years—and only making a full-time living at it for about the last year or so—so it still feels a little funny calling myself a screenwriter,” he said.
He first thought of Bubbles, a biopic of Michael Jackson by way of his beloved chimpanzee, after running across two items: a news story about Bubbles living in a Florida ape sanctuary after Jackson’s death, and Me Cheetah: My Life in Hollywood, a 2009 pseudo-memoir about the chimp who played Tarzan’s simian pal. The idea of seeing Jackson through Bubbles’s eyes intrigued Adamson, but the story didn’t fully gel until he saw 2014’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes portray the conflict and hierarchy within the primate social structure.
“A lightbulb just went off: What if Bubbles spoke with a pseudo-Shakespearean voice and believed himself to be the heir of The King of Pop?” Adamson said.
The challenge became not letting Jackson overwhelm the story. “It’s similar in ways to Amadeus in that the story isn’t really about Mozart; it’s about Salieri. Yes, it does function as a Michael Jackson biopic, but he’s not really the protagonist.”
Bubbles topped 2015’s Black List. Soon afterward, Adamson was tapped to adapt Alcon Entertainment’s psychological thriller The Ice Twins, based on S.K. Tremayne’s book about a family turned upside-down after an accident kills one of their twin daughters.
Then producer Andrew Kortschak of End Cue, along with
Dan Harmon and his Starburns Industries production company, acquired Bubbles to become a stop-motion animated feature. Harmon was an executive producer of Anomalisa, nominated for a 2016 Best Animated Film Oscar.
“Bubbles wasn’t conceived as animation, and I think that’s part of what Starburns found appealing, given their aesthetic,” Adamson said. “The brand of hyper-realistic stop-motion animation they pioneered in Anomalisa, besides looking amazing, solves a lot of the practical puzzles in turning this script into an actual film, like how do we find an actor who looks like Michael Jackson, how do we train a chimpanzee to do the moonwalk, how can we recreate Neverland without spending a bajillion dollars.”
https://www.finaldraft.com/blog/2016/07/19/spec-spotlight-isaac-adamson-talks-bubbles/
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Secondly about that controversial producer who co-acquired the script (there's always something about these folk....):
Calls for Rick and Morty to be cancelled after Dan Harmon 'baby rape' video resurfaces
Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon is facing criticism for an old video that has re-emerged, in which he simulates the rape of a baby doll in a parody of the TV series Dexter.
The video, which was created in 2009, was unearthed originally in 2018 and shared online by right-wing blogs. It has now resurfaced again, causing outrage and leading to calls for Mr Harmon’s Cartoon Network series Rick and Morty, which streams on Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, to be cancelled.
The video was created for a monthly comedy sketch festival called Channel 101
Mr Harmon opens the video, saying, “Hi I’m Dan Harmon. You’re about to watch my controversial new pilot, Daryl.
“Now I have to warn you, I originally made it with Showtime for their audience because it’s a little groundbreaking for normal people to handle. But maybe you’ll surprise me. Good luck.”
The video then features a skit of Daryl, which is a parody of Showtime’s serial killer drama Dexter.
In the disturbing skit, Mr Harmon simulates raping a baby doll.
The clip has been shared hundreds of times on social media, with people commenting their disgust and some saying Rick and Morty should be cancelled or using the hashtag #savethechildren
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/rick-and-morty-dan-harmon-video-cancelled-a4525151.html
