This is what confuses me.... sometimes you see projects that are similar or have the exact same premise get snapped up....while others claim that their projects were dead as soon as something similar was picked up. There's no rhyme or reason. Also, since we all watch the same news, listen to the same songs and go to the theater and watch the same movie, it's hard to come up with something that's not already in the ethos.... who hasn't thought of an invasion of the white house movie, a crazy bridesmaid movie or some version of a shark movie (it's a shark, but 10 times bigger than the one in Jaws!).

Paul, I feel your frustration. There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to 'similar but different,' just that this is a known fact about how Hollywood operates. I wish there were some sort of scientific formula for figuring out the whims of the buyers -- why this similar project sells and that one doesn't -- but there isn't. The reality is there are no new stories. Everything is a remix (have you seen the Kirby Ferguson video series) and the best feedback I can offer you is this: Story concept - Similar Characters - Different That is the idea of the story benefits from its similarity to preceding IP for marketing purposes, but what differentiates it from other content is the uniqueness of the characters. Ghostbusters is a perfect example. They tried for YEARS to do GB3 with all sorts of variations on storylines, but it wasn't until Paul Feig said, "Let's do it with female characters" -- that's the unique angle -- the project moved forward. If I have time, I'll expand my thoughts on this in a blog post because with the nostalgia zeitgeist redefining 'similar', it's probably worth a larger discussion about the subject.

Thanks for your well-thought out response. Many times, I have thought I come up with something original and become stunned to see something come up with almost the same idea... Many times, it's not even something that's been out in the news so I wonder how people not related to me can come up with the exact same thing. I think the things out in the world follow a certain logic and writers everywhere just take the next logic leap and hence might think of the same thing. Probably in the old west, writers wondered what would happen if things could fly or beings came from the moon...but, now that we have that, we're wondering beyond that.

Paul, what you're talking about is what Jung called 'synchronicity'. If you believe in such a thing as a 'collective unconscious', there's all this 'stuff' roiling around which each of us somehow shares, particularly archetypes. So you're where you are, you come up with an idea, in effect you've dipped into the collective unconscious. Meanwhile somebody 10,000 miles away - same idea, same collective unconscious. Now I don't know if I believe any of that, why not chalk it up to coincidence? However there do seem to be universal narratives and archetypes which resonate with people on deep levels of their being. None of that is much comfort when an idea we had gets snaked out from under us by someone else who just happens to have come up with it at the same time. The way I deal with it if it doesn't pass similar but different test: Wasn't meant to be. Move onto the next story.